


during this, and tender

by shatou



Series: Ripley, truly, Kingsley [1]
Category: Ripley Series - Patricia Highsmith, Talented Mr Ripley (1999)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Character Death Fix, Film and book canon mashup, Fix-It, Happy Ending, M/M, Past abuse (mentioned and made-up), Peter lives, The violence is only a drunken fight and in chapter 10, This fic has never been beta-ed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2020-10-29 15:16:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 30,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20798732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shatou/pseuds/shatou
Summary: The woman at the reception smiled. “Name, please?”“Robert S. Fanshaw,” Tom said, unsmiling. There was never any Robert S. Fanshaw to walk this earth.The luggage was rolled away as soon as the name had been signed. Tom left without another wistful look.





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dickie nodded with a hum. “I like the sound of that.”
> 
> Tom grinned. “Good.” He knew now that Dickie didn’t read the letters.

“Who’s _Di Massimo_?”, Dickie asked one day as they sat shoulder to shoulder, bathed in the morning sun of Mongibello. Tom was concocting yet another letter to Mr. Greenleaf. Marge had gone off. _I feel a surge of inspiration_, she’d said, referring to her in-the-making novel of course. _See you later, boys._ Tom thought _Good riddance_, but he’d said, _What a pity_. His promise to keep Dickie entertained fell on two pairs of deaf ears as Marge and Dickie shared a revoltingly affectionate kiss.

“Can’t you read?” Tom laughed, stilling his pen on the word _great_. He was going to add _artist_.

Dickie elbowed him. “Talking back now, aren’t we?” He snickered. “Too much work to read all this. You’re wordy, you know? Keep that up and my old man might just find out what we’re up to.”

Tom looked to him. He must have looked alarmed, because a second later Dickie burst out laughing. “Oh look at you. Did Mr. Greenleaf spook you so?”

“No, I’m appalled that you only realized I’m wordy just now,” Tom replied smoothly, exaggerating his surprise with a dramatic hand on his chest. “Haven’t you read any of these letters I’ve written under your name?”

It earned an eye-roll from Dickie, a good-natured one, and Tom shrugged to mask his contentment. “‘Course I had,” Dickie said. “Anyway, you made him up, right? This Di Massimo of yours.”

Tom nodded.

“So he’s supposed to be a—” Dickie peered over. His breath smelled of ale. “...er, jazz singer? Or what?”

“You could say that,” Tom said. “The voice to your melody. Someone who inspires your musical soul.” Dickie snorted, so Tom added quickly, “An elusive artist. Only known in the underground.”

“Ooh. Elusive.” Dickie echoed. He nodded with a pensive hum. “I like the sound of that.”

Tom grinned. “Good.” He knew now that Dickie didn’t read the letters.

—

Fausto was in the house. Fausto, Dickie’s local oh-so-good friend and Tom’s current informal Italian tutor, had been in the house for about an hour without coming upstairs, lounging about in the living room as though he owned the place, and Tom knew because Fausto was not even hiding it, not even trying to limit the noise as he rummaged Dickie and Marge’s shiny new ice box to help himself to a cold drink. But Tom didn’t bother to come down to greet him, or even acknowledge his presence with a good-nature _ Buon giorno _ called from upstairs. No; he was not in the mood for talks, and he had no plans to stop reading.

But then the Italian man went upstairs and Tom was forced to stand up from the armchair with an overly wide smile. Fausto waved him off and asked Tom about his progress with the language. “Not much,” Tom answered in English a tiny, confessing tone, getting across a point that would probably fare better than the cold venom he wanted to spit out right now. He didn’t dislike Fausto that much, truly, not usually. It was just his foul mood; Dickie had gone out with Marge for the evening without telling him a word, and while he was napping too, despite Marge having promised they would go out together for dinner. Tom had spent half an hour imagining himself crashing their dinner and telling Dickie that somebody had put something into his drink that made him sleep for so long in the middle of the day, and then another half hour to weave himself a dream where Marge was the one who overslept on the couch and he, in her stead, would have told Dickie, _ Perhaps we should let her rest. Let us go have a sandwich and a drink and bring your saxophone so that we could pass by the cabaret again; I won’t tell her _ . Fausto, of course, had nothing to do with the entire affair, but right this moment Tom hated him the way he hated that new icebox that Marge had chosen out for their luxurious apartment of a lovebirds’ nest. Smoky and bronzed and sea breeze-salted like a sundried Venetian herring, good-looking Fausto was yet another reminder that Dickie had everything he could have wanted and Tom Ripley didn’t figure among them - didn’t figure among the _ things Dickie wanted _ , to be clear, because he considered himself a thing Dickie quite _ had_.

Fausto dropped himself into a chair, sighing and curling himself into comfort in it like a cat. Out of politeness only Tom offered him a cigarette and was surprised to find him declining. “I’m-a saving it for a rainy day,” he said, to which Tom had to, despite himself, laugh. “What do you mean?” Fausto shrugged and didn’t answer, his faraway gaze somewhere along the red horizon. Tom didn’t see the appeal. Mongibello was pretty in the mornings, but Tom did not like sunset; maybe because he’d never liked sunsets at all. And Mongibello wasn’t rainy. Fausto would have to save that cigarette for years, probably. With that thought Tom resumed to his chair and his book. He wasn’t past two sentences when Fausto piped up again, to his annoyance.

“You made up a good name, Tomaso.” 

Tom hated that nickname, too. He smiled. “What are you talking about?”

“_Di Massimo_. Not common, but not too strange,” Fausto said, turning back only a little. Half a smile played across his lips. It was obvious that he thought this was a compliment, which Tom took with as much grace as he thought appropriate. “It is very much an artist name.”

“It’s actually a real person,” Tom said, still smiling. Of course it was a lie; Di Massimo was entirely a creation of his mind, not one that he was especially proud of either, but he couldn’t afford to have Fausto think to highly of him. Not when Fausto was apparently close enough to Dickie to _ know _ about this fictive musician that Dickie wouldn’t have bothered to even learn of had he not been there with Tom while Tom was writing - typing, recently - his letters.

This seemed to have piqued Fausto’s interest. “Truly? Is he not from around?”

“Oh, no.” _ He couldn’t have_. “I just saw him talking to someone at a park. I think he was a composer. Carrying some scores and all. Tall, pale, dark-haired, definitely not a Mongibello kind of person you know. Not with this much sun.”

Fausto laughed a little. “Pity he isn’t. I could really have gotten you three to meet, and then your little lie won’t be a lie anymore.” The embers of late sun went out on the horizon like the end of a cigarette finally turning to ash, and the now sky was so suddenly, startlingly beautiful.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There were brighter promises in Venice and beyond.

Dickie’s cold, dead, bloody embrace that Tom had arranged himself into was the warmest Dickie had ever been to him. Instead of letting the sloshing waves rock him to sleep under the hard white sunlight of San Remo, he let his mind bleed into the clean new wood of the boat, down into the water, down towards the rocks at the bottom of the gulf, rocks that he would be piling onto this boat and over Dickie’s cadavre in a bit.

—

_ There_, Tom thought, looking down at his handiwork. His own name in Dickie’s cursive laid off-center on the envelope. The ink bled a bit from the _ i _ without a dot.

Tom went to the bed, back to the pile of clothing that he was starting to sort. One stack was all the garments that had _ G _ or _ R.G. _ (one even had _ Dickie_) embroidered on them, and the pins and clips and anything that would mark the wearer as a Richard Greenleaf. The other stack, much smaller, were Tom Ripley’s old corduroy suit and a few innocuous shirts. Tom folded each piece of clothing as if he did cherish them.

He shouldn’t have, he realized when he heard footsteps climbing up the stairs and then towards his door. He thought he’d had more time than this. Quickly he gathered the finished stacks and put them into their respective suitcases - Dickie’s, and his. The envelope should go into Dickie’s, as did the scratched out passport and the other papers. He just had to—

There was a knock at the door. _ Shit _, Tom thought. He ran a hand through his hair, and went to get the door. That was it, he was done. Inspector Roverini was back with all his suspicions, and as soon as he came inside and saw the suitcases, there was no doubt he’d think Dickie Greenleaf was preparing to flee. Tom was so sure of this.

Instead, he was greeted with a cheerful “Signor Dee-kie!”. He smiled back at the housekeeper as he usually did, even a little more warmly than he usually did. Barely anything she said came through to him, and Tom entertained her rapid Italian with an interjection here and there and that was it. He resumed his task amidst garments, serenity now gone.

—

Tom drove and drove. The car felt heavier than it should, with Dickie’s things in the back. American Express came into view in the bleak barely-morning light. Tom felt nauseous with regret as he exited the car and strolled towards the reception, lugging the suitcases and the saxophone and everything along.

The woman at the reception smiled. “Name, please?”

“Robert S. Fanshaw,” Tom said, unsmiling. There was never any Robert S. Fanshaw to walk this earth.

The luggage was rolled away as soon as the name had been signed. Tom left without another wistful look. Maybe someday he would be back there; maybe someday he’d touch those suitcases again. Tom wasn’t sure if he cared anymore. He felt light, surprisingly. There were brighter promises in Venice and beyond. He pulled out the business card he’d found in Dickie’s jacket pocket yesterday - the one he’d gotten that night at the opera. _ Smith-Kingsley_...


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “As you say, then. Worst case scenario I’ll take advantage of your hospitality.”
> 
> “I wouldn’t necessarily call it worst,” Peter grinned. His hand swung back a little. Tom felt the brush of his skin again. Something in him wanted to prolong that moment.

_ Dear Peter, _

_ I’m going to be in Venice in a few days. I didn’t expect ferries to be so booked this time of the year, but I’ve finally gotten myself a ticket. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a car? I was thinking of maybe getting one while in your city. I don’t think I’m in any measure to keep an entire place on my own, or stay at hotels for extended amount of time. Do you think it’s possible to get a car in Venice? A second-hand, most preferably. _

_ By the way, have you been in contact with Marge at all? Last time she wrote, she told me the police had some news about Dickie. They were looking for him; he was missing after the whole Freddie affair - you must have heard about it by now. I hope Dickie is alright, for Marge’s sake as well as his. She seemed quite shaken and I’m concerned. _

_ See you in Venice. _

_ Thomas Ripley _

When Tom arrived, the first thing Peter Smith-Kingsley told him was, “No friend of mine is going to sleep in a car while in my city.”

Tom was quite pleased with himself. He was correct. Peter wasted no time to offer help, the kind soul. “I assure you, there is no such thing as an apartment you cannot afford in Venice,” the man said as they strolled down the town square, leaving in their wake flocks of startled pigeons taking to air. “And if anything, you can always stay in my apartment. It’s far too spacious for one person, I dare say.”

“Yet you’ve lived there on your own all this time,” Tom said with a breathy laugh. A sharp gust of wind flipped his coat over and made him stagger. In a brief moment his knuckle brushed Peter’s hand. “As you say, then. Worst case scenario I’ll take advantage of your hospitality.”

“I wouldn’t necessarily call it _ worst _,” Peter grinned. His hand swung back a little. Tom felt the brush of his skin again. Something in him wanted to prolong that moment.

  
—

The dim police station was filled with people - some complaining, some being complained about - and the faint stench of urine. Despite Peter’s smile, Tom could sense the discomfort from him as they sat waiting. He felt the need to apologize, but Peter beat him to it. 

“Sorry this is how you have to spend your first day.”

“It’s okay,” Tom answered swiftly, wide-eyed. “I mean, you’re the one who’s stuck here and you don’t have to.”

“Don’t be daft,” Peter breathed out a laugh. “I’m happy to help. The sooner you get this done with, the sooner you’ll get to enjoy the actual good part of Venice.”

Tom opened his mouth to answer, but they both startled when something clanged loudly across the room. A yelp, stomping footsteps and angry German ensued. The only one manning the reception desk - a middle-aged _ signor _not even wearing uniform - barely turned towards the ruckus. He yawned, and that was the most active Tom had seen of him since he’d set foot into this god-forsaken place. 

A warm hand swiftly squeezed Tom’s shoulder. “Wait here,” Peter said, rising to his feet. “I’ll ask them why they’re making us wait.” Tom watched him stroll towards the desk, the only sign of impatience being his brisk pace. 

  
—

As soon as Inspector Verrecchia produced the opened envelope, Tom knew what it was before he even saw his name on it. His name, in Dickie’s cursive, the _ i _ missing its dot. He snatched it, nearly toppling the chair over as he stood. _ No, no, no, no! _ They were not supposed to find it in Dickie’s room. It was supposed to go into the suitcase, the one _ S. Richard Greenleaf _ scrubbed out on the side, the one that was lying in the vaults of American Express Naples under the name _ Robert S. Fanshaw _.

He stared down at the crumpled sheets in his clammy hand. Behind him, Peter was placating the evidently displeased inspector. Tom heard not a thing. His own words as Dickie on the paper echoed in his mind, mocking him.

_ ...I realise you can change the people, change the scenery, but you can't change your own rotten self. Now I can't think what to do, or where to go. I'm haunted by everything I've done, and can't undo. I'm sorry... _

All the way at the end of the letter was Dickie’s will, in which he declared to leave all of his wealth to Tom Ripley. Tom had added it in a moment of spontaneous inspiration, and now he was paying for it.

“It’s a suicide note,” Tom rasped.

“Tom…” Peter stood up, his voice written with concern. Tom couldn’t see his face as he strode past so fast and tears were clouding his vision, but he could imagine the worried look on Peter’s face.

“You ask me all these question…” The table shook from force as he slammed the letter down in front of the inspector from Rome. “...and you’ve already read this _ suicide _ note!”

Tom didn’t know Peter was right behind him when he turned around and into his arms. He shook against Peter’s chest and clung to him all the same.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “...Come on, Peter. There _is_ no free lunch, don’t worry.”
> 
> “You Americans and your adages,” Peter shook his head but made no move to untangle their hands as they headed towards the doors. Tom delighted to see his ears pinker than before. Hopefully it wasn’t just a trick of the light.

Tom poked out from behind the pillar as soon as he heard footsteps echoing down the marble hall of the Pietà. He could pick out Peter’s gait amidst the crowd of sounds. Peter planted his heel squarely down for every step, and was steady even when he strode. He was the kind of person who would be difficult to trip. 

“Peter,” Tom called. The Englishman looked up and smiled and separated himself from the group of musicians. His hand was on Tom’s shoulder before his steps even halted completely. He was pink and slightly out of breath.

Peter’s smile grew bashful after a few seconds, like it had when their eyes met during the rehearsal. But he didn’t shy away from Tom’s gaze this time. “You didn’t have to wait for me.” He fumbled with the belts of his music score folder.

“Who said I was waiting for you? I was taking my time. This is a fine church.”

For a split second Peter froze, face caught between surprise and amusement, half illuminated in twinkling sunlight. Tom wished he could capture it, but he could only join voices as they broke out in laughter one heartbeat later. “Fine enough for you to skip lunch, Mister Ripley? It’s— agh, damn,” Peter glanced down, cursing under his breath at his naked wrists. He slipped a hand under Tom’s palm and stole a glance at his watch. “...It’s past fourteen,” he declared, almost triumphant.

“I was rather looking forward to treating you to one.” Tom ignored the beginning of Peter’s protests, twisted his forearm to catch his hand. “In exchange for you initiating me to Venetian cuisine, that is. Come on, Peter. There  _ is _ no free lunch, don’t worry.”

“You Americans and your adages,” Peter shook his head but made no move to untangle their hands as they headed towards the doors. Tom delighted to see his ears pinker than before. Hopefully it wasn’t just a trick of the light.

  
—  
  


The restaurant was tucked in a quiet alley between rows of colorful houses, some of which seemed to date back to the Renaissance. The foliage above gave way to patches of green-tinted sunlight on uneven stone pavings. Vines curled on the yellowed walls, hugging a wooden sign boasting  _ Il Gioco _ in faded paint.

Peter took care not to step on any of the magenta petals littered on the front porch and Tom took care to follow. The door creaked open with a soft jingle. It smelled divine inside - like garlic butter and toasted bread, tomato and olive, parsley and oregano. Tom opted for a wave when they were greeted in Italian because he was supposed to not speak any.

“I hope you aren’t allergic to seafood,” Peter said, taking a seat only after Tom had settled in his. Tom laughed before he realized it was an earnest statement. Blessedly, Peter laughed along. “I take that as a no then.”

They shared appetizers - sweet-and-sour, tangy  _ sarde in saor _ and creamy  _ baccala mantecato _ on fresh bread. “I’m not really a gourmet,” the Englishman confessed then, between bites of grilled  _ polenta _ . Tom assured him he had good tastes. “I suppose you can’t go wrong with Italian food.” Peter had laughed a little. Then the black  _ risotto _ came out and Tom could feel him watching with eager eyes. 

“It’s going to stain, isn’t it?” Tom cocked a brow at him. 

“See for yourself.” Peter grinned boyishly. The spoon caught light and gleamed as he lifted it in one swift slide of the hand. Everything he did with his hands was graceful. Everything about him, was.

It did stain. It wasn’t long before Peter’s lips were tinted with inky calamari sauce. Thin, shapely lips, with smiling curves etched into the corners. Tom caught himself staring. Memories of a past that seemed so distant, despite being only months ago, flashed across his mind. Dickie and he in the cabaret, singing their lungs out into one same microphone; Dickie in the bathtub, caressing the rook with wet fingers before knocking the king over with it in a hasty castling move; Dickie, wetting his lips, pushing another glass of wine into Tom’s hand, laughing. Dickie, lips stained, stained crimson, like the rest of his head, blood oozing into blond hair, flesh breaking, teeth and bone cracking under Tom’s oar—

“Tom? Is something the matter?”

Tom gave a start. Peter had put down his spoon. His brows were drawn and angled upwards in a grimace of concern. Mouth, his pretty mouth, still smeared with black, was downturned, frowning, worried. Suddenly everything went very quiet. Even the song that had been playing in the background had ended. Silence reigned between the two music tracks, and between them.

The next song started, soft piano notes followed by a soprano voice. Vulnerable, almost sad, it sounded, insofar as the scratchy recording could carry through. 

“Moreschi,” Peter broke the silence hushedly with a quick little smile, leaning backwards. “Alessandro Moreschi. The singer, I mean.” He waved, as though he could point at the music in the air.

“He’s a man?” Tom found himself asking back then cursing inwardly for sounding too surprised for someone who apparently frequented operas among the likes of Marge Sherwood and Meredith Logue. Then he remembered the boy soprano in Peter’s orchestra just earlier. Such high a voice... “He must have been young.”

He wondered if it was his imagination, or if Peter’s smile did grow sad. “No, he was a castrato. Castrato, as in, castrated. They did that to some choirboys who sung really well well, back in the days. Against their will, of course.” He sighed. “Moreschi was the last of his kind.”

_ Oh _ . “Did it pay, though? They were performers, after all.”

“Pay, yes. Pay _well_, that I doubt. They scraped by, as far as I know. Most of them weren’t successful and fell out of favor with the public as soon as the next star rose. A lot of them… ended up in prostitution.”

A reverent pause. Moreschi’s voice climbed up a mournful crescendo while the piano merrily pattered on in broken chords. “That’s where talent gets them, huh,” Tom said, softly. He realized this was the first time he’d seen Peter looking sad. 

“Mm. Oh, how somber. Sorry that it— what are you doing?” 

Tom slid his thumb along Peter’s lower lip, from where the frowny corner had turned back up again towards the midpoint, right beneath the dip of the Cupid’s bow. The juiciest part, and stained.

“You’ve got something on your face.” He smiled. There was a quiver under his thumb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ave Maria, sung by Alessandro Moreschi: https://youtu.be/KLjvfqnD0ws


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I know it was you,” Marge continued darkly. “You duped Dickie. You know something and you don’t tell us.”
> 
> “Marge…”
> 
> “You might have _killed_ him for all I know.” Her voice rose into a shaky hiss. She turned on her heels, but not before landing her last blow.
> 
> “Peter deserves better.”

“By the way, Tom, I found just the apartment for you,” Peter had said, airily, as they entered the passenger deck to take shelter from the sudden rain.

They had spent the day in Murano, touring the Roman collection in the Museum of Glass, and now they were on the vaporetto again, heading back to Venice. Tom bit the inside of his lip, suddenly overcome with something like disappointment. “Oh, that's… great. So quick of you. Thank you.”

He stared down at his hands, at the wooden box he was holding. Inside was a chess set made of stained glass. Peter had caught him staring at it, for completely different reasons than he had probably imagined, but Peter insisted and Tom did not have the heart nor the will to deny him.

Peter lost no time in catching up. “Did I say something to upset you? I thought you still wanted a place, so—”

“No, no, I’m just not looking forward to packing up.” Tom pushed up his glasses and mustered a chuckle. “I’m not made of glass, Peter.”

“I’ll help,” Peter offered, visibly relaxed.

Tom didn’t have to force the smile this time. “Please. You’ll just distract me.”

—

As soon as the ring of Peter’s vaudeville tune died out, Tom’s fingers found the right notes for _ Stabat Mater _ again, mindlessly.

“If I could take a giant eraser and rub everything out…” His voice almost cracked. “Starting with myself. The thing is, Peter, if...” Tom looked up, glassy eyed. “If—” He darted his eyes away, voice trailing. “If…”

Peter tilted his head, waiting. Silence. “...No key, huh?”

Silence, still.

Outside, the sun wavered.

—

Tom’s chest leapt painfully at the wide smile Peter gave as he took the key with a promise to come back. _ Would he, though? _

—

He did.

The ground still felt like it was bobbing on harsh waves, seesawing from one side to another, but. Tom swallowed down the feeling of being seasick on land as he leaned back in the sofa. His cut hand stung. Tom liked to think it was the dull pain keeping him anchored, not the warmth of Peter’s cradling hand.

Peter was absently running his thumb along the already smooth bandage on Tom’s palm.

“...I’m sorry.” Peter said it as though he’d been mulling the word over for a while. Tom looked to him, startled.

“You don’t have to apologize on Marge’s behalf, I’m not—” Tom paused, realizing he hadn’t said a word, leaving all the talking and hushing to Peter as he ushered a sobbing, frightened Marge outside and into his car, then came back with a first-aid kit. “...I’m not angry with her.”

Peter thinned his lips. Tom found himself drawn to them, whatever he did therewith.

“No, this isn’t— I’m sorry, about having you move out.”

Tom stared at him incredulously.

Somehow Peter took that as cue for more. “Sorry if I ever made you feel unwelcome. I never meant to.” He blinked fast, and Tom wanted to kiss the crease out from between his brows. “Had I known you have sleeping troubles, I wouldn’t have pressured you to keep an apartment on your own, I—” 

“Peter, you don’t pressure me.” Tom said, twisting their hands together. 

“You can stay with me for however long it pleases you, you know that.”

“I know.” 

It didn’t escape him, the way Peter looked at him through his lashes for a second, opened his mouth and then opted for a smile instead. Of course Peter wouldn’t press it. Tom glanced at the door, thought of how close he’d come to killing Marge. 

“Peter, would you…” His voice cracked just where he wanted it to. “Come back here, after Marge is settled?”

The radiant look on Peter’s face said it all.

—

Marjorie Sherwood, Herbert Greenleaf, Aloy McCarron. They all came and they all went, one by one. Tom Ripley played his part. He offered Mr. Greenleaf his condolences with a bowed head and answered Detective McCarron's questions like a dutiful schoolboy. Marge was another creature altogether, after what transpired the other night. It turned out that the rings mattered little to Mr. Greenleaf - he was a practical man, and oh, Dickie promised to _ Marge _ he'd never taken off his rings, not to Herbert, so what good was it for? Tom had to hide his glee over her bitterness.

His words from the day before made a return in his mind. _ I loved you_, and he didn’t, but that was what he’d said. _ ...Just write it on a piece of paper or something, and keep it in your purse for a rainy day. Tom loves me. _Wasn’t it just so sweet? She ought to be grateful that Tom Ripley didn’t kill her. Not ignore him and harp on about Dickie’s rings.

Tom brought it up again, all innocent smile and vicious reminder. “...But I hope that note goes to New York in your purse, for a rainy day.” 

“Why do I think there's never been a Ripley rainy day?” She squinted at Tom like he was a belly-up cockroach - no longer threatening, just dirty and low. Her eyes reminded Tom of the people he frequented in New York. Of Aunt Dottie and her friends. 

“I know it was you,” Marge continued darkly. “You duped Dickie. You know something and you don’t tell us.”

“Marge…”

“You might have _ killed _ him for all I know.” Her voice rose into a shaky hiss. She turned on her heels, but not before landing her last blow.

“Peter deserves better.”

Tom stared at the vaporetto as it disappeared towards the horizon. He felt as though Marge had struck him in the face.

He might as well tell Peter she did.

—

Tom took it upon himself to pass by the marketplace on his way back and emerged with two bulky bags. He wanted something luscious tonight. It was meant to be a surprise, but Peter caught him on the doorsteps as he was groping around his pocket for the key with which he’d been entrusted.

“I finished early,” Peter explained hastily before Tom even asked anything. He shifted the bag on his shoulder, looking nervous and happy at once. “All this for us?”

“None for you if you don’t carry one.” Tom pushed a bag into Peter’s hands. Peter laughed, took it and reached over him for the other. He smelled faintly sweet and waxy; no cologne. Tom bottled the scent in his mind and turned the key. 

The sight of the mahogany piano and music stands greeted him like old friends that Tom had only just realized he’d missed dearly. He took Peter’s coat as the other made a beeline for the kitchen. The apartment smelled like books and like Peter. As did the coat, which Tom stared at for a few moments before hanging. It was a size too large for him, unlike Dickie’s clothes which fit him eerily well.

Tom felt his face stretch into a pleasant smile as he heard a little cry of delighted surprise. He stepped into the kitchen to find Peter already half swallowed by the cupboard, searching for the right wine glasses.

“Need any help?” Tom came up from behind, taking in a breath.

“I’m good.” Peter turned around and bumped right into him, chest to chest. He chuckled. “Tom, you’re blocking me. Be a dear and go turn on some music, would you?”

Much later into the evening, when they’d cleared up their plates and were lounging by the fireplace with a glass of valpolicella in hand and a recording of _ La Follia _ \- Vivaldi’s rendition - in the background, Tom’d casually said, “I heard Di Massimo used to play the violin.”

“Who’s Di Massimo?” Peter turned his head a little. The way the question was phrased struck a chord in Tom’s memory. The tone was completely different, though. Peter sounded genuinely curious. 

“You don’t know him?” Tom feigned surprise. “He sort of made a name of himself at this cabaret. Percussions and vocal. I’ve only seen him once, though. Dickie used to sing with him.”

Peter propped his chin up on one hand at _ Dickie_. His eyes were still smiling, but his shoulders set guardedly. “I don’t know, Tom, I’m not a jazz person.”

“Neither am I,” Tom reassured. He’d pretended to like jazz for so long, he almost thought he’d just lied. “I just remembered they said he had classical backgrounds.”

The glass clinked against the wooden table. A pensive silence followed. Peter didn’t seem to notice Tom looking at him, and frankly Tom didn’t even worry. If Peter looked back and caught his gaze now, chances were that he’d just smile his guileless smile.

“I play the violin, too,” Peter declared, all of a sudden. He rose, padded away on socked feet and came back with a violin case. “Well, used to play. God, this is bringing back memories,” Peter smiled fondly, opened it and plucked the bow out of the velvet. A little cloud of white dust puffed out as he flicked a thumb against the horsehair before tightening the screw. Tom perked up. “It’s been so long...”

And Tom spent the next five minutes smiling broadly as Peter fitted the shoulder rest and tuned the instrument and chattered on. He barely heard a thing. All he could think of was, a-ha! That was it, he found it. That scent. Peter smelled faintly sweet and waxy. Peter smelled like rosin.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was a Saturday when Tom woke up in the middle of the night to find Peter looming over his bed. Tom sat up, pushed the covers aside, turned on the lamp, put on his glasses, got out of bed, and throughout all that Peter remained unmoving, silent as a shadow.

He returned they keys to Franchetti - his flamboyant landlord - and moved back into Peter’s apartment on the next day. The guest bedroom had been rearranged: the pillow cases and covers were new; the curtains had been changed; the bedside table sported, beside the lamp, a little case just the size of his glasses. Peter handed him his set of keys - front gate, front door, back door, bedroom doors, windows. Tom singled out a small, simple brass key whose role he couldn’t quite make out. “What’s this?”, he asked, perplexed.

Peter smiled sheepishly. “It’s for the piano.”

—

It was a Saturday when Tom woke up in the middle of the night to find Peter looming over his bed. Tom sat up, pushed the covers aside, turned on the lamp, put on his glasses, got out of bed, and throughout all that Peter remained unmoving, silent as a shadow. His eyes were serenely shut.

“Peter”, Tom whispered and got nothing in return. He touched Peter’s face, and Peter leaned, so he caressed on until his palm fit to the line of Peter’s jaw, flat against his steady pulse. “Peter,” he said, louder this time. No response. Tom broke into a small smile.

He ran the tip of his nose from the hollow of Peter’s clavicles up, across his Adam’s apple and the slight cleft of his chin. Up across lips and cheekbone he went, pressing closer and inhaling harder. There was less rosin and more lavender soap now. Tom only opened his eyes when they were level with Peter’s. His lashes were so long and dark against pale skin.

Peter’s breath hitched once and Tom’s mind scrambled with an excuse, should he awake. But there was barely even a movement under his eyelids. Tom stared, for a moment, holding his breath. When he was sure, when he was so very sure that the man was still fast asleep, he tip-toed and pressed a kiss to Peter’s brow. Another to Peter’s temple. A last one on his jaw. He slipped an arm around Peter and made himself shudder in the half-embrace. 

Finally Tom pulled back, thrilled and bitterly ashamed, and closed his grip firmly around Peter’s forearm. “Come on, let’s get you back to bed,” he said to himself, steering the taller, broader and far kinder man out towards the door. Peter obeyed, walking slowly, his steps still firm as ever. Heels, balls, heels, balls. They entered the bedroom; he pulled the covers over Peter’s sleeping form, resisting the urge to kiss him once more.

He thought that was the end of it, but he wasn’t two steps past the doorway when Peter got up again. Tom allowed himself the other hand on the small of Peter’s back, guided him back to bed, and turned to leave. The floor creaked as Peter was out of bed for the third time, and his resolve evaporated. “I don’t want to wake you,” Tom reasoned as he climbed into bed after laying Peter down. He manoeuvred Peter’s arms around him like a lover. They slept soundly through the night.

—

“You didn’t have to do that for me.” Peter rubbed his face. “I'm sorry, this hasn’t happened in a long time.”

Peter had woken up first, wrapped around Tom like he’d taken him to bed. Or he believed he’d woke up first, at least, and Tom had let him. Now Peter was scooted all the way to the edge of the bed. His bedhair clung to his forehead in sweat and his ears were glowing pink. He looked mortified.

"Good that it hasn’t, or I would've been very concerned." Tom had heard of sleepwalkers climbing out of windows and taking knives from kitchens. He crouched towards Peter, slowly, like to a lost faun. "Peter. Tell me what brought it on. Is it me?"

"Absolutely not." Peter sputtered out a laugh of disbelief. "It's just that I'm not used to, to having people stay." He wiped his hands on the front of his shirt. 

It sounded like a lie, but wasn't. Tom knew what a lie looked like. “I’ve stayed before,” he reminded, softly. He took Peter by the wrist and met the pained gaze in his still-smiling eyes. “You don’t want people to leave.”

“I— Well, that…”

"Is this why you had Marge stay at my place?"

For a moment Peter seemed utterly confused. "Marge? Oh… No, it’s not about this at all. It’s just, you’re not— she, Marge, she’s not the kind of person who would be so happy with the cramped—"

"Am I the kind who would?"

Peter widened his eyes in realization, horrified. "No, Tom. _ God_, Tom. That's not what I—"

"Am I the kind who would leave you over something like this?"

Peter smiled faintly. “If you do, I promise I won’t change the keys.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What are you talking about— You’re not a nobody; that’s the last thing you are!” Peter protested, propping himself on an elbow. Tom stared at him, desperate. _Peter, please,_ he thought. His breath could have stopped right now. Meredith… Meredith had too much company. They’d seen her kiss him - or seen him kiss her - and heard her call him Dickie. He couldn’t handle so many dead bodies.
> 
> But there was only one Peter Smith-Kingsley.

Of course Tom didn’t leave. He only regretted that he hadn’t offered to spend the next few nights in Peter’s bed under the guise of keeping an eye on him. He’d banked it on the hopes that Peter would sleepwalk again - which he did not - but that was only half the reason. The other half was a reticence Tom did not know he was capable of. 

Tom was sitting in the living room one evening, newspaper sprawled about him as he scoured for a job, when the door clicked and jingled and creaked. There was something inexplicably reassuring about this life - he had his circle, buoyant and welcoming, which was nothing like the cliques he’d forced his way into back in New York, for all they knew about Tom Ripley was that he was American and that he was often found having a coffee with the musician and conductor Peter Smith-Kingsley. But above all was the security and anticipation of awaiting someone’s sure return, daily. The tranquil routine could almost lull Tom into forgetting the blood on his hands.

“You’re back,” he greeted Peter at the doorstep. “You’re late.”

“Are you finally admitting you’ve been waiting for me?” Peter asked, earned a shove to the shoulder. They both laughed. “Sorry, anyhow. We had a little meeting after rehearsal.” Peter hung his coat. Tom suddenly felt nervous. He knew what Peter was going to say next. “You know. For the concert in Athens.”

The way Peter said it made it so light and airy, nothing like the quivering weight in Tom’s chest. He was going to be alone again. “When are you leaving? In a week?”

“Yes and, about that…” It was Peter’s turn to look hesitant. Tom couldn’t understand why. “I was going to ask if you’d want to come along.”

Tom felt as though he was reeling back in elation. “Why, I’d love to,” he said it casually as he could, squeezing Peter’s shoulder. Peter blinked, lips slightly parted, eyes wide, then they crinkled and his mouth shaped itself into a smile - the usual transition. Tom tore his eyes away from his darling mouth. He wanted it on his lips.

After dinner, Tom tried out the sonata Peter had arranged for solo piano, and then they tried to improvise it into a four-hand, which collapsed in a jumble of off-tune notes. They bumped elbows and brushed hands, and when they’d quieted down from guffaws of laughter Peter spoke again, a little embarrassed. “Actually, I’ve already booked a double cabin.”

—

“...Dickie and Peter, that would be too good rumor, don’t you think?” He felt a foul taste in his mouth, almost as bad as Meredith’s kiss, even before he realized his slip of the tongue. 

In that instant he was back to being Tom from before Dickie. _ Sissy _ , Aunt Dottie had called him. _ Oh for Christ’s sake, Tommie, shut up! _, he’d been told to his face amidst the groups he’d forced his way in and then regretted ever knowing, and that was Tom Ripley, that was nobody, that was what they should have identified the decomposing body in San Remo as, that—

Peter caught onto it. “Or _ Tom _ and Peter even.” He looked less unsuspecting and more pouty. Tom’s eyes watered at the thought. He clutched the cord in his hands, wounded it about his neck, testing its elasticity.

“That would be even better rumor.” He laughed, humorless.

The sheets rustled as Peter shift, confusion written on his face. “Really, why?” He closed his music score, tucked it away, turning to Tom. Lips parted, eyes wide. Only this time it didn’t turn into a smile. His forehead creased from concern. Tom wished he could kiss his brows. Kiss his mouth, his dainty, pretty mouth, one last time.

“Tom… I— Sorry, I’m completely lost.”

Tom laughed again, loudly and miserably. “_I’m _ lost. I’ve… I’m going to be stuck in the basement, aren’t I, that’s my, that’s my— terrible and alone and dark— and,” he faltered, for a moment, yet his smile was frozen stuck on his lips and it hurt. “I’ve lied about who I am… and where I am… and nobody will ever find me again.”

“What do you mean you’ve lied about who you are?” Tom couldn’t see Peter very well, through his tears, but he could hear the concern in his voice.

“I’ve always thought, it’s better to be a fake somebody, than a real nobody.” Tom felt tickled. Maybe if he laughed harder the tears would dry away.

“What are you talking about— You’re not a nobody; that’s the last thing you are!” Peter protested, propping himself on an elbow. Tom stared at him, desperate. _ Peter, please _, he thought. His breath could have stopped right now. Meredith… Meredith had too much company. They’d seen her kiss him - or seen him kiss her - and heard her call him Dickie. He couldn’t handle so many dead bodies.

But there was only one Peter Smith-Kingsley.

“And don’t forget,” Peter added, startling Tom out of his morbid reverie. The man curled up slowly into a sitting position, the space between his chest and lap an inviting seat. “I have the key.”

Tom breathed in a stab of air. “You… yes. You have the key.” He lied. He didn’t dare say Peter’s name. If he did he would sob and sob until he dissolved. “Tell me some good things about Tom Ripley… Don’t get up,” he added, approaching, one hand forward in a silent plea, the other clutching the cord behind his back. “Just tell me some nice things.”

“Nice things about Tom Ripley?” Peter still seemed lost, but Tom could feel his body give as he laid himself down on Peter’s back. “That could take some time.” And now Peter was breathing out a chuckle. So gullible, so _ trusting _ it almost made Tom mad. “Tom is—”

There was a knock at the door.

The cord slid from Tom's hands as he sat up and fumbled his pockets. No glasses. He didn't even bother to mask his alarm as he turned sharply towards the door from the second, impatient knock.

"Mr. Ripley?", came the muffled voice from the other side of the door. Peter looked at him wide-eyed in confusion and he had the right to. Even Tom only felt the wetness on his own cheek just now. He probably looked flushed and puffy-eyed and ridiculous.

“Wait here, okay?” Peter squeezed his shoulder before striding towards the door. Tom felt like they were back at the police station in Venice weeks ago. It felt like centuries. He nodded and pushed the cord under the bed with the heel of his feet. He could barely hear a thing as Peter did the talking. His head was spinning - what could possibly be the reason for someone to call for him? And who? Could it be that Freddie Miles wasn’t truly dead and was coming back for him? Could it be that _ Dickie _ wasn’t truly dead—

“Tom... Tom? It’s a letter. From Mr. Greenleaf.” 

_ From Mr. Greenleaf_. By the look of the stamps, the letter dated from about three weeks prior; forwarded to the Hellenes in case it was delivered to the country of destination past a certain date. How did he know about Peter and Athens? That must have been Marge. Tom felt sick to the stomach.

Peter gingerly sat down next to him, wound an arm across his shoulder. “God, Tom, you’re shaking like a leaf. What’s the matter?” Tom leaned into the warmth, chasing light like a moth. Peter wasn’t fire; Peter wouldn’t burn. “Do you want me to give you some privacy?”

“No.” Tom croaked where he meant to scream. “I’m alright… Don’t go.” He took the envelope and a deep breath, and tore open the edge. This was it. This was the end, they'd found out about it all. They'd realized Marge was right and Tom Ripley was no more. And Peter… oh, Peter. "Just don't read."

Peter nodded and looked away, arm still around him.

_ My dear Tom, _

_ It came to my knowledge that the police has Dickie’s suitcases checked in at American Express under the name Robert S. Fanshaw. His name has been scrubbed out. His passport was found among his belongings; his photo was also scratched out. One of the tags on the saxophone also read the aforementioned name. The police speculated that he might be traveling elsewhere using a different identity. _

_ I have had McCarron resume investigation. Additionally, Miss Sherwood has told me that you have spent a fair amount of time with my son in Rome, according to what Dickie told her in his letters. As such, I would greatly appreciate any further help you could bring. I do recall Dickie mentioning a certain Di Massimo in his letters quite frequently. I trust you to tell me more about this artist from your point of view. _

_ Have a good time in Greece. Send Smith-Kingsley my best wishes. _

_ Sincerely, _

_ H. R. Greenleaf _

Tom folded the letter and held it in his hands. His head was spinning. Dickie’s ghost was back and after him once more. If they found his fingerprints all over Dickie’s _ Robert S. Fanshaw _ luggage, the truth would be out like a stream from a broken dam. With Marge’s suspicions it would be as easy as ABC. And even if they didn’t, they were all hounding for Dickie again; what if they remembered that corpse in San Remo… What if they sought out the last few people who had claimed to have seen Dickie, such as Meredith Logue. No, what if Meredith herself sought them out, what if Meredith and _ Peter— _

In his delirium he’d almost forgotten Peter - his physical presence here and his abstract presence in this entire mess. Peter Smith-Kingsley the English aristocrat, respectable composer, prestigious répétiteur. Peter the upright, kind soul who would not stand to the side to see the end of Tom Ripley come about. What if, what if...

Tom thought of the cord under the bed and made a decision.

“Peter,” he began. Beside him, Peter finally stirred. Tom could tell he was tense too, but his breathing remained steady and the calm seeped into Tom. He didn’t wait for a response. He turned to catch Peter’s returning gaze. Tom had no qualms playing the wounded fledgling if that meant protection and frankly he didn’t even need to play. 

“What is it, Tom? Tell me. Please.” Peter tightened his arm around him. Tom shuddered. 

“Dickie… They found Dickie’s things. Under a pseudonym.” Tom said, handing Peter the letter. “You can read it.”

Peter did, and then, “Isn’t it good news?” His tone said anything but _ good news _. Peter sounded like he was talking about Meredith all over. “He’s probably alive. You… miss him, don’t you?”

“The thing is, Peter…” Tom swallowed, closing his eyes, the perfect image of shakenness, buying time. He started to invent. He must convince himself first before persuading anyone to believe him. Peter whispered a, “I’m listening,” and Tom felt convinced.

“I lived with Dickie for a time,” he began, in a voice that might have said _ Once upon a time _. “I don’t know if he’s told anyone, but I lived with him in Rome." There were exchanges between Marge and Dickie - while Tom was being Dickie - to prove it. "We were close as brothers. Well, I believed so at least. I had reasons to, you know, I— we, we shared a bed at times— don't tell anyone this, please, I'm not supposed to—"

"I won't." Peter nodded knowingly, his face blank like he was holding back something.

"...Usually it was when he had been drinking," Tom whispered fearfully, painting the feelings in his mind as vivid as he could. He could feel the fear he was inventing. "And then the next day he'd pretend nothing happened, but I understand. It's alright. Dickie didn't want to talk about that kind of thing. Sometimes it hurt and I, I, I would bring it up and he'd brush it away and I'd say I'd leave, but he laughed at me, said he knew I didn't have a penny on me so I couldn't have left, not with my poor Italian no, and, and he was right. I couldn't.”

Tom buried his face in his hands. Peter brought his other arm around him, drawing him into a full embrace. "Tom, Tom, hey," he hushed, "you don't have to say more." 

_ Oh, but I must_, Tom thought. He shook his head and smiled sadly. "I think it's just my fault. I overreacted, I thought too much about the little things, Dickie said so—"

"_Forget _ what Dickie said about you." Peter said, jaws taut.

"I don't get it, him, I don't get him. One second he'd say he wanted me gone and the next he would— want to touch. And when I told him… when I told him I…" Tom thought of that day on the motorboat, just the two of them alone and afloat in San Remo, and he was telling Dickie his plans and hopes and pouring his heart out just to have them all squashed, and Tom shook with real anger. He swallowed hard. "He said I gave him the creeps. I was a leech because I didn't have a job; I was boring, because I was always trying to please him, and all I could do… all I ever did was following him around like, _ like a little girl _ he said." Tom lifted his head. Peter looked white as a sheet, aghast.

"He took… me." Tom continued hoarsely. "Dickie took me; why was it okay for _ him _ to take me, but when I talked about love he _ threw me out _?!" He let indignation course through him, taste again the repugnance he’d felt like a hangover after the giddiness of every successful move. “I thought he’s gone and now turns out he’s left with some singer, so what was the will all about? I don’t understand if he’s just, just trying to spite Mr. Greenleaf or… mocking me.” Tom let out a laugh as empty as Dickie’s old promises. 

“He used to try to stop me from leaving, you know? He'd get me some, some nice things after every time he— thought I was extra upset, and I'd thought he wasn't so bad after all, and on and on until… until Meredith…”

“_Meredith_?”

Tom realized his mistake and turned it around. “I— oh no. I can’t talk about her right now…”

“It’s okay, it’s all good.” Peter pulled back and wiped the tears on Tom's face with his thumb. Tom slumped, breathing out broken, shaky _ I’m sorry _s. It got him the desired effect of Peter shushing him worriedly. “No, Tom, don’t be. You’re the last one to be sorry, alright?” Tom nodded, and Peter carried on. “Stay inside, if you’d like.”

“I don’t want to be alone,” Tom whispered. “Peter, please.”

“I’ll stay. We’ll stay. In here.” Peter cradled his head. “And don’t think for a second that I would be bothered by that. I wouldn’t.”

Tom nodded. He wouldn’t, either.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tom said: "Tell me more about your Irish castles," and Peter just laughed. "No, I'm serious. I don't know a thing about you." _Well, I do, but not as much as I'd like to._
> 
> Peter shook his head, still smiling. His ears were pink at the tip again. "_Castle_, Tom, castle in singular."

Tom sat silent, curled in one corner of his bed. By the time it was dark outside the porthole, he could feel the emptiness of his stomach like a pressure against the hollow of his ribs. Peter, seated serenely on the edge of his bed, was as quiet as he had been for the past hour, completely engorged in his scores. He thought Peter’s gaze fell on him sometimes, but didn’t dare look up to confirm. 

His mind was storming. Did Peter buy it or was he just pretending he didn’t see through Tom’s act? Was Peter going to question him over again? Even if Peter no longer harbor any doubts for the time being, they couldn’t stay in here for the entire three-day-long trip. If anything, the hunger creeping onto him was evidence enough. They had to go out to dine at some point.

And then, like the blessed creature he was, Peter stood and stretched and asked if Tom would want to take a look at the in-cabin dining offers, and Tom all too gladly unfurled from his corner and joined Peter on the other side.

—

It was only after dinner that Tom produced the wooden box bagged in velvet that he’d brought along, to Peter's amusement. They set up the Murano glass chess set in dim, toasty lighting. Tom made sure to position the checkerboard so that Peter played the white pieces - or, in this case, the translucent pieces, mostly clear save for shards of pale colored glass grafted here and there. A rather avant garde sort of design.

They played leisurely. Peter looked glad, relaxed. Tom realized, then, that the man had been watching him as carefully as Tom did him, though most certainly not for the same reasons. Peter was not a boulder; Peter, too, had been shaken, but only the ghost of his alarm could ever be read when he felt sure again. Peter was not a boulder, but a tree trunk, an ancient yet lively one, not immune to shocks but capable of nursing himself and all that relied on him back to health. If Peter had been afraid, it was not of him, but _ for _ him. Tom knew he was safe for now, therefore so was Peter, and he too was very glad.

Tom caressed his sleek dark rook and castled. There wasn’t that many black pieces - not entirely black, of course, rather the dark jewel shades of various colors - left on the board. He said: "Tell me more about your Irish castles," and Peter just laughed. "No, I'm serious. I don't know a thing about you." _ Well, I do, but not as much as I'd like to. _

Peter shook his head, still smiling. His ears were pink at the tip again. "_Castle_, Tom, castle in singular." This made Tom laugh as well. Strange was the ways of Peter's modesty, natural to him as air. Dickie didn't have it, Marge didn't have it, Meredith didn't have it, Freddie _certainly _ didn't have any of it. It was a humility impossible to manufacture, a humility native to only those who knew themselves and were happy with the knowledge.

Tom advanced a pawn. He beckoned Peter to say more and Peter complied. "It's a very old thing, like a country house for us really. We used to go there about twice a year; two months in summer and one in winter. It isn't big, but it's in the middle of this great plot, you see, and my father had them grow all sorts of things in there. I remember going picking berries and getting scratches all over my legs." Peter chuckled, looking full of nostalgia. Tom was imagining a young, gangly Peter, freckled even under the shadow of a straw hat, short shorts over milk pale legs navigating through sharp leaves and pointy branches. "There was even a barn, but it was too much maintenance so we sold all the animals. My sisters were so heartbroken to see the chicks go, Father had to get them a cat later."

"You have sisters?"

"Yes, three of them, all older than me." There was a patient fondness in Peter's quiet laugh to himself. He placed his knight firm the way he planted his feet when he walked, capturing Tom’s queen without much thought. "It's been a while since I last saw them…"

"I don't have any siblings," Tom blurted, moving yet another piece.

Peter’s hand stilled on his rook. "Is that so?"

"Yeah, I— I'm," Tom weighed his paths. _ Wounded fledgling. _ Glass tinkled. He exhaled. "I was raised by my aunt."

He was staring at Peter’s hand quickly moving the white queen before folding back behind his elbow. Tom didn’t need to look up to know that Peter was fixing him with a frowny gaze. He did not meet Peter’s eyes.

“Um, yeah. My parents passed when I was really young. So long ago I don’t even remember much.” One more pawn forward.

“I’m sorry, Tom.”

“Don’t worry about it. And behold, promote to knight.” Tom’s pawn touched the White’s end of the board, a little more than two squares away from the prone white king. “Checkmate.”

He stood, ignoring Peter’s laughing protests (_Tom, you cheater!_) as he turned away. “I’m going to take a shower. Join me if you want,” he said. And he was, you bet, oh you bet, he was smiling.

—

Of course Peter didn’t join him - one man could hardly make space in the little shower, much less two. By the time the both of them were barefooted on one bed and wrapped in bathrobes, the cabin had gotten slightly humid, misty with the steam from the shower and the steam from their skin and they didn’t dare to open the porthole because it would be chilly. They should get dressed but they didn’t, huddling in the sheets instead. Peter told him about his father’s uncle, who kept the castles - sorry, _ castle _ \- in Ireland, how he managed the entire thing until he died, how _ that _ was when they stopped maintaining the barn because no one they hired could really do the job. There was also music in his childhood, more pronounced and concerted of course, but Tom was surprised to find that in this respect Peter resembled him more than he would have imagined. In the sense that, Peter did not have his family’s blessing in his musical endeavors. His sisters were indifferent, his father reluctant, his mother vehemently against.

“The only person who encouraged me to pursue music was my répétiteur in boarding school. Funnily enough,” Peter’s smile grew subtle and fond, “he actually became family later. He’s married my eldest sister.” He glowed, and Tom understood. He could read summers of adolescent pining, of thumping heartbeats in after-school lone tutoring sessions, of resigned smiles and wistful envy in nuptial celebrations not meant for him.

Peter was still musing. “And my youngest elder sister met her husband at one of the concerts I took part in, so it wasn’t a hapless trade after all, huh?” Not even a trace of bitterness poisons the coiling, healing sap of the tree that was his being.

“Are they all married? Peter, what about you?” Peter shrugged; Tom pressed an elbow to his side. “Come on, how _ old _ are you? I can’t be older than you and even I have a fiancée.”

The old lie saw a shadow cross Peter’s face, like last time, but only very, very brief. He was quick to grin. “Twenty-five.”

This time Tom _ was _surprised. “You are younger than me.”

“Yes, so? You know what, go to sleep.”

“You’re _ younger _ than me. You know my age, you knew this all along!”

“Oh, shut it now.”

“—Jesus, Peter, that’s adorable—”

Peter swung a pillow at him. When their laughter had died down, Peter asked Tom about Boston and they exchanged tales of their younger years. Tom talked about Aunt Dottie, of his New York “friends”, of the little bits of happiness that scattered across his childhood in the form of his few brushes with music: marching band (he didn’t like it), orchestra (he liked this), theatre (he had to quit, but he _ very much _ liked it). He avoided speaking of Princeton if he even talked about school at all, but it should be obvious by now and Peter seemed to care more about the few piano lessons Tom stole into when he pretended to hang around in his neighbor’s house doing paid chores, than any kind of formal education he could boast. 

They fell asleep like that, robed, undressed.

And woke up like that, robed, undressed, smilingly, undisturbed in the soft hazy morning light, rocked by the waves. Until somebody knocked yet again, and Tom grappled for his glasses, knowing ice-cold in his heart who that scratchy, womanly voice belonged to.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _No, dear Peter no_, Tom heard himself saying inside his head, in a voice more of Dickie than of Tom Ripley, _I am so happy I could kiss you right now and deal with the wrath of any God out there afterwards._ Instead he kept his mouth shut and his facade in place, merely shaking his head no.

Meredith Logue’s call was answered by a groggy Peter who barely fastened the bathrobe in time to get the door. Tom bolted up and hurried into the bathroom with the excuse of needing to change. The lock made an unmistakable _ click._ Tom knew his panic could not be explained by any apparent shyness he’d played up. Peter would be suspicious for sure, but for the time being, it was all Tom could do to hide from Meredith’s searching eyes. 

He sat against the thin plywood door, anxiously listening. Turns out Meredith was looking for Dickie and Peter was the only person who she knew had ties with Dickie, on board. Muffled as her voice was, Tom could hear the edge of despair in it, as clear as Peter’s confusion when he said: “I’m sorry, Meredith. I haven’t seen Dickie in ages.” Nobody mentioned the _ Robert S. Fanshaw _ news. It seemed to be something Mr. Greenleaf had yet to release to the press, and Peter held his tongue. They exchanged far too polite greetings.

Tom’s heart sung. Peter _ was _ his best bet after all. His walking alibi, and not just. Tom glimpsed sentimental dreams he’d thought far gone: constant recognition in banal domesticity. Being a real somebody, in a way that did not require fame or even riches. Yes. He would secure this man.

Tom stumbled out of the bathroom as soon as the cabin door creaked to a close.“I didn’t want to see her,” he blurted.

“Why? I thought you were on friendly terms?” Peter, ever so good, ever so concerned, asked.

Tom considered his chances. Difficult; he knew so little of her. “I… don’t want to badmouth a friend of yours, to you.” If he recalled right, Peter did spend a Christmas at the Logue’s once. He did not want to go out on a limb in defaming Meredith Logue to someone who might be favorable of her - never mind the fact that Peter had seemed visibly upset over Tom sharing her a kiss. Meredith had a much more commanding presence than Marge; she would be much more apt to fight tooth and nail for someone to listen to her if needed be, and those were the kinds of people who would end up being heard.

“Oh, I did not know her all that well. I only met her twice, once during Christmas and the second was that time at the Cafe Dinelli... Rome, right after the time we first met.” A fond little smile crossed Peter’s face. In that moment, Tom knew. If he couldn’t kill her for all the trouble it was worth, if he couldn’t do to her what he’d done with Marjorie Sherwood - make everyone think she was unstable and unreliable and not believe a word she said - then, better yet, he thought, he could make her out to be a scheming temptress. Make himself out to be a victim, why wouldn’t he? He could even deny the wealth bequeathed to him in Dickie’s while he was at it, saying he wanted no part in it; afraid it was another cruel taunt of theirs. Tom could believe his own lies and live the rest of his life in Peter’s comforting arms. Nobody would question Smith-Kingsley, so all he had to do was to make sure the Smith-Kingsley wouldn’t question _ him._

And Tom told him. He said Meredith first went for him, and he was fine with even her advances, especially when Dickie was treating him so bad. But then he realized Meredith was only trying to use him, get him on her side, because she and Dickie were involved with each other behind Marge’s back, at times. Tom had at some point discovered it, and Dickie forced him not to tell her about either Marge or about himself. That was really the last straw that made him leave Dickie, he confessed tearfully. The day on the dock of _ Hellenes_, that was her advances that coerced him into the kiss. “I don’t know, Peter,” his breath hitched, “I don’t understand Meredith. Even now I don’t. Sometimes I felt like she might’ve really liked me. I don’t know if she was lying to Dickie or to me.”

Tom only realized he was shaking when Peter drew him into his arms.

“She would kiss me one moment, and, and pretend she didn’t know me the next,” Tom whispered.

“Hush, Tom,” Peter said. “You needn’t say another word.” Tom felt his heart against Peter’s like two hummingbirds fussing through the bars of a cage. Which one was inside and which one out, he couldn’t say for sure.

—

Tom was shaken with giddiness for the rest of the day - he had Peter! _ Peter_! on his side - and he thanked his luck that he could keep his face pinched in paranoia, an expression that made Peter twice ask him if he was feeling ill or hurt anywhere. _ No, dear Peter no,_ Tom heard himself saying inside his head, in a voice more of Dickie than of Tom Ripley, _ I am so happy I could kiss you right now and deal with the wrath of any God out there afterwards_. Instead he kept his mouth shut and his facade in place, merely shaking his head no. “I’m just a little worried,” he said, coincidentally over a rumbling of his stomach. Peter laughed and said Tom was worrying his stomach the most.

“You okay to go outside?” Peter asked and second-guessed himself right away with a thoughtful hum. “Maybe not yet. I don’t want to shut you inside too much, but it shall depend on how you fare, Tom.”

Tom waved him off with a tired-enough smile, and insisted “I should be okay,” with the right amount of reluctance for someone paranoid before the return of old sources of terrors. He needed to balance out his adamant pleas to shut them both inside yesterday. He felt replenished with a newfound source of confidence, that he was deft enough to avoid Meredith and co, especially Meredith; to convincingly deny them if he happened to bump into any; and in the worst possible case to shield himself behind beloved Peter. Perhaps a little risky to bet it all on Peter, yes, but Tom was suddenly in the merry mood to gamble.

But then the telephone sounded. The familiar vocal fry was distinct, even through electronic transmission. It was Meredith, and though Tom couldn’t make out any of her words through the buzzing sounds, he could guess that she was already back to fish for more. Peter asked for a minute, then covered the mouthpiece of the phone. “Meredith invited us to dinner on the upper deck,” he said, looking at Tom as though looking for approval or suggestion.

“Oh…” Tom stared back, letting the previous smile slip from his face as slowly and obviously as could be at the sound of her name. He started to fidget with the hem of his shirt, and when he spoke, he spoke in a whisper. “Go without me, Peter. Don’t worry about me.”

“It’s not a must,” Peter said, explanatory. 

“It is!” Tom played his voice in a semitone under panic. He admired the concern flashing across Peter’s eyes and took his time to seemingly realize having raised his voice. “Sorry. I’m just worried she might speculate… unbecoming things, about you, if you keep to me and to our cabin.” Tom paused, then added hastily as though he’d only recalled, “I don’t mean to make it sound so vicious—”

“I get it, don’t worry,” Peter said, the hint of a smile returning. “I don’t want to leave you here like this, but…”

“I’m good. Go, Peter. Have a good time; she might know something about Dickie we don’t, and then we can help.”

The hinted smile grew on Peter’s lips, but it didn’t seem amused. “I doubt it,” he shrugged, then spoke into the phone. “Yes, I will be coming. In an hour? No, forty-five minutes? Okay. Perfect. See you soon.” He hung up, turning to him fully. “I really hate to leave you all alone to this, Tom. Especially when your stomach is so worried.” 

Tom was smiling back before he knew it. It was often that way with Peter - warm little things spurred out of his control and he didn’t even mind. “Get me something good, then. Appetizer. Something salty.”

This time Peter smiled for real, laughed for real, and Tom felt those warm little things even more vividly, fluttering in his chest. “Right, right. Now help me pick a tie, would you?”


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything hurt but nothing seemed to be broken. His body felt like a tower being erected again from the rubble, one stone piled onto another, until he was on his feet again, slumped to the side, but standing. He started walking, and it felt like he never stopped _starting_ to walk.

The _ Hellenes _ was a handsome cruise ship. Not too large, not too small, it boasted decorated halls wide enough to hold buffets and cocktails and dinner parties; polished wooden corridors between cabins; and separate balconies on several stories of upper decks suitable for viewing sunset, sunrise, or a storm thundering in from the flanks if there was any - which, thankfully, there wasn’t. More than adequate for such a curt trip, the ship was well equipped enough in the higher tiers to satisfy the likes of the Logues, and cheap enough on the lower decks to attract third-class passengers to spend a few nights there without complaints. For them, Peter had selected the modest and more than decent middle-range cabins. Not a suite, hence the small bathrooms and portholes, but the doors opened very near the stairs and conveniently led down to the third-class decks without navigating through any shiny slab of _ First-class Only_. 

Tom regarded this convenience with all due gratitude. As soon as Peter had gone to meet with Meredith, as soon as Tom was very sure the two were surely installed on the terrace cafe-restaurant, he had strolled out of their shared cabin and gone straight for the bottom decks. Tom had his idea of spending an evening, to be sure. He wore a very worn, very faded khaki jacket that he’d forgotten to take out of the suitcase rather than having packed intentionally. If he remembered correctly, the threadbare jacket had been excavated by Aunt Dottie from the moths-infected wardrobe of his late uncle and tossed to a highschool boy Tom years ago. He had kept it with him at the bottom of trunks all these times, somehow unable to part with it like a sick man unable to part with a rotten toe. Now was the time for it to be of more use than just suitcase lining. 

Upon passing a few dim and damp corridors, the smell of cheap alcohol hit his nose before he even reached the open space meant as a sort of eating spot in the middle of the lowest deck. Families stood together, chattering loudly, father laughing in their cups and mothers running after shrieking children. Crowds of baggageless men leaned against pillars and walls, red in the face, drinking from the bottle and guffawing in laughter. The festivities of a collective meal was in the air. Tom caught a faint whiff of rotten wood from the inside of his jacket. Suddenly he was the Tom Ripley of New York again, segueing from alleyway into Raoul’s for a cup and a laugh without missing a beat. He took in a noseful of the mossy smell of the third-class deck and muddy boots and the beer and vodka. He swanned into the circle, smiling and cheery and not unlike Dickie Greenleaf in Paris, just not with the thousand franc bills to spare. 

Tom cussed for being late to some imaginary meeting hour, made a bawdy joke about some girl not letting him go, someone passed him a bottle and a rough voice commented on his glasses, and he slipped them off and inside his pocket and they all laughed and it was all good. It was easy to slink up to a band of tipsy men and just match rhythm with their aimless jabber so long as you spoke their grammar. When you dined at round tables with three layers of tablecloths and two rows of cutlery, you got to either pretend you had willfully ignored all gossip out of principles or be truly up to date with everything about everyone. Amongst socialites, you were watched but not seen; you were listened to but not heard; and nobody would tell you as your slip-ups added up until you were quietly purged out of their circles. Amongst the third-class passengers on a Mediterranean cruise ship, everyone was chummy; simultaneously rude and accepting with no prerequisites, and nobody listened to anybody unless you said something so pungent they wanted to punch you in the nose.

Which was exactly what Tom did. 

Tom didn’t even remember what he had said, or to whom. It was vaguely directed at one of the burlier men in the group, some comment the way his face grew ruddy as he drank, something alluding to him making passes to queers, something Tom had heard before and only regurgitated because it was grating to the ears and suddenly there were knuckles collapsing with the side of his face. Tom didn’t get up; he glared up at the slightly blurry figures - because he did not have his glasses on - and smirked and spat at his feet. He waited for at least two more blows, holding onto the neck of the empty bottle in his hand like a lifeline. It wasn’t until he felt something warm trickle down his nose and a metallic taste on his lip, did he shatter the bottle. Somebody screamed. Tom hauled himself onto his knees only to be pushed down again; he struggled as boots met with his ribs. “You crazy _ fuck _ you dare touch my face again,” he said and felt hoarse and sore and alight when he bought himself enough time to rise and swing the broken bottle, hoping it’d get the desired effect of the ragged glass cutting someone, preferably in the face.

If it did, he wouldn’t have known, because they took the hint just as Tom had hoped, and they went for his face. Again, and again. Tom tried to avoid the shards on the ground, which it was hard to do so while ducking and shielding himself with no effectivity. His blood was on the ground, on broken glass, on his sleeves. Anything he saw, he saw in blurry glimpses, eyes squinted, squeezed shut, brows knit, face twisted, body wrung, thrown to the ground. He sputtered, cursed, insulted, added fuel to fire. A boot bore down at the base of his skull; his cheekbone ground against the floor. He couldn’t tell apart where he was still being hit and where he was throbbing from having been hit. Tom drifted in and out of darkness, tongue tucked back inside his mouth. He vaguely remembered fighting back only to get yanked up by the collar; and glass burst by his ear, ringing, cold and sharp, vertigo, warm and wet, smell of booze, people shouting, his head swam, he swam, he swam into black silence.

Tom awoke propped against a damp corner on the penultimate step at the top of the stairs. They must have left him here after realizing he wasn’t moving anymore. He took a few moments to breathe. He could open one eye; the other was swollen shut. Good. His body creaked awake, joint by joint. He moved his fingertips, then fingers, then wrists and elbows and shoulders, until he could lift his hands to check for cuts. None; there were only scratches, at least on the part of the skin where he could see. No sharp pain. Everything hurt but nothing seemed to be broken. He did the same to his legs, warming up bone by little bone until he could attempt broader movements. His hand skittered against the wall as he leaned on it, the only crutch he had. His body felt like a tower erected again from the rubble, one stone piled onto another, until he was on his feet again, slumped to the side, but standing. He started walking, and it felt like he never stopped _ starting _ to walk. He was moving along at least. If anyone had seen him at all they must have given not a damn, Tom figured. He managed to drag himself up the stairs and into the light, eyes on the ground because doubling up eased the pain. He wasn’t sure how far he’d gone when someone gasped above his head. Tom recognize the pair of shoes in front of him to be Peter’s. 

Peter did not say a thing. He carefully slid himself under Tom’s weight until Tom was entirely leaned onto his back, arms over Peter’s shoulders. Too tired to feel anything else past the point where Peter slipped his hands behind Tom’s knees, he drifted off as Peter carried him back to shore. He woke from his short slumber when he was lowered to the bed, bloody and dirty and clad in moth-eaten jacket and shoes and all. “Peter,” Tom croaked out. Peter shushed. Tom heard running water and smelled betadine and clean gauze.

He could see the condition of himself reflected on Peter’s face - brows in deep creases, lips in a severe line, an outward calmness belied entirely by his irregular breaths. Peter started with cleaning Tom’s face, discarding heaps of dirtied linen in the process. Tom watched him with his one open eye. Peter didn’t seem like he was used to patching people up, the way his hands quiver, but he worked slow and sure. His touch was gentle, his gaze intent, and he was almost anxiously considerate. Tom obeyed where he instructed (_Turn to this side a bit_), heeded what he warned (_Careful _ here and _ This will sting a bit _ there), and when Peter seemed to have been done with the bandages on his temple, Tom held onto his hand. Save for the perfunctory instructions and considerate warnings, Peter had been worryingly sparing with his words this night. The Peter in his head, in the scenarios Tom had rehearsed out loud, proper English accent and all, had said so much more. _ I was looking everywhere for you. You did not even leave me a note. Why did you do such a thing?_, Tom had imagined Peter would say. _ Was it my doing? Had I done something to drive you out of our cabin? _ And Tom would reassure him it was none of Peter’s fault, but he couldn’t _ bear _ to be alone with memories of Meredith and Dickie and their supposed cruelty bearing down on him. It was supposed to be blamed all on Meredith, and Dickie for whom Meredith was an immediate proxy.

The real Peter asked nothing of the sort. He stared at Tom with the look of a heavy heart, thumb running along the old scar in Tom’s palm. When he spoke again he was solemn and pleading. “Tom... Thomas. Please promise me you will never do this to yourself again.” That was the first time ever that Peter had called him _Thomas_. And that, was where all of Tom’s imagined dialogues evaporated into blubbering tears.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The calm ended and the storm came, in the form of Meredith Logue.

When Tom came to, he was still laying on his back, numb and stiff as a plank of wood. He laid there, eyes closed, letting the rest of his senses wander. His body was one giant pulsating bruise; he didn’t know where tired muscles ended and broken veins began. Blankets were pulled over him, his clothes were soft and he could not feel the thick ridge of his old jacket’s seams against his back. Shoes no longer pinch his unsocked feet, that was now brushing pleasantly against the blanket draped over it. Tom tried turning his head to the side and felt a layer of gauge where his cheek was supposed to meet the pillow. His face was swathed round in linen, and something told him that the throbbing heat on his temple must have been that of a healing gash. Tom caught the note of alcohol in the air and briefly wondered if it was medicinal or a remnant of the drunken fight.

His neck protested from the movement. Tom groaned, which must have roused Peter awake because he heard rustling blankets and felt shifting weight on the mattress not two heartbeats later. Warm fingers brushed against his forehead. Tom sighed. His eyes cracked open, and only one of them could open wide. Backlit by soft morning light, Peter’s silhouette was glowing at the edges. Tom smiled and it hurt and he winced and Peter must have frowned because he could hear the downturned lips in his voice, even when his eyes were too unfocused and blurry to see clearly.

He croaked out a feeble _ Good morning_, to which Peter simply said - echoed, really: “I think we should stay in here for the rest of the trip.”

Peter made it rather clear that he was not to leave Tom to himself again anywhere in the foreseeable future, so Tom felt responsible to make it more than clear that it was no one’s fault (but Meredith’s, perhaps) that he had been reckless enough to pick a fight with drunken men in the third-class deck. “It reminds me of Raoul’s. Have I ever told you about Raoul’s?”, Tom had started when Peter helped him out of bed. “It was a stinky old place just like down there. Even the alcohol was bad, but somehow I kept coming around. It’s reassuring how mediocre it is, you know?” In truth, it was Tom’s thin wallet and Raoul’s cheap prices.

“Do you miss New York?” Peter asked carefully. They were trudging towards the bathroom at a sluggish place because of him and Tom would have been ashamed if this wasn’t what he had consciously planned for himself.

“I wouldn’t say so.” Tom answered in a beat. “It wasn’t really ever home.”

Peter hummed knowingly and left him leaning against the bathroom sink with the softest of pats on his shoulder. Tom took his time admiring his reflection in the mirror. He looked just how he imagined he would look - one eye was swallowed in a dark swell, one brow was covered with cottons, his lips were split, his nose wasn’t misshapen but obvious broken and covered in bandages. He could see the edge of a cut peeking out from the gauges on his temple, and where he was not bandaged he was black and blue and purple. He found bandages on his arms, as well, and his ribs were bruised so dark he was surprised nothing felt broken in there, but they weren’t of importance. 

It wasn’t until he’d gotten back out and Tom was back on the bed did Peter ask, carefully, “Don’t you think you’d seek a home elsewhere, then?”

“I don’t consider myself seeking,” Tom said. Peter’s little _ Oh _ was quiet and resigned, and Tom had to smile even though smiling hurt. “I mean, I like it here.”

“Here? On the _ Hellenes_?” Peter laughed, with an air of nervousness that rattled Tom like a misplaced lie, so Tom was laughing himself silly too when he said, “In your company, you fool,” too afraid to weigh it down with the truth of it. He might’ve imagined it, but somewhere within the laughter he thought he’d heard someone say _ Likewise_.

—

Nobody bothered them again afterwards, except at their bidding and to bring them the in-cabin meals accordingly. “The restaurant is no better,” Peter had confirmed matter-of-factly, no judgment in that, and Tom took the chance to ask about the dinner with Meredith. It had perhaps seemed a funny little thing to Peter, because he started it with, “Oh, you’d like this,” and a breathy chuckle. And he was right; Tom did like it, liked it best to hear that Meredith and co would only be staying in Athens for barely two days before heading for Santorini. Other than this meager piece of information about her own trip that she’d given up (“...rushing it out before I even asked, I swear...”, said Peter) like some kind of friendly offering, Meredith, predictably, had not even pretended to have tact; she hounded on Peter for anything about Dickie - not anything recent, mind you, but personal things about Dickie, some of which were oddly intimate. “...and she asked me what Mrs. Greenleaf’s maiden name was, Tom, can you imagine it?”, Peter had said in between laughter and Tom felt so very sorry for the bewilderment that Peter had had to endure.

“How close were you to Dickie?” Tom asked, suddenly worried. He had handcrafted quite an unbecoming tale for Dickie, after all.

Peter set his teacup on the table. “I thought we were quite close until I realized we couldn’t be friends.” The silver spoon tinkled softly in his cup as Peter absently stirred his lukewarm tea. “I considered him acquaintance, at best, and for Marge’s sake only. And now that my worst suspicions are confirmed...” His gaze shifted to Tom.

“He’s cut off ties with us, at any rate,” Tom supplied with genuine relief. He added, so as not to sound too gleeful, “I wish he would just write Marge again though, if he’s out there.”

Peter nodded approvingly, while Tom sung in his head. _ But he wouldn’t, I’m so sorry for Marge too but he wouldn’t, because Dickie is dead, deader than a nail. _ Out loud Tom asked innocently, “So what did you tell Meredith? About Mrs. Greenleaf’s maiden name?”

“I said probably even Dickie doesn’t know.”

“She must have been wildly disappointed.”

“I’d say she looked very offended for a moment there. And then…”

And then, and then, and then. And then they talked and wandered in their tales, and smiled and laughed, and Tom kept thinking about the one full truth he’d told, honestly, sincerely. _ Home in your company_.

—

It was starting to feel a bit like the calm before a storm. Meredith was nowhere to be seen in the crowd even as the ship came ashore and they showed their passports to border police, joined the stream of disembarking passengers and waited alongside them for a cab. _ Maybe she was too good for a cab_, Tom thought. _ Maybe she has family here too and someone is going to get her because Meredith is Meredith Logue and co, a lot of co, and she has family everywhere_. Peter had time to pocket an afternoon paper - the only one in Italian - from a nearby stand, before their cab arrived.

Athens was golden and crawling with early summer. Hot sun scattered crumblingly dry on rocky slopes and stone terraces. There was a labyrinthine quality to the city, with the acropolis looming above and streets crisscrossing in narrow corners and making odd shapes out of house blocks within. Walls were few and columns were plenty; the air smelled of frying oil; the people and the stray dogs were loud, and louder and louder still as they headed towards the heart of the city. Athens wore its ancient age with grace and a bursting liveliness all the same, like an old grandfather who with a straight face insisted on getting drunk on Friday night. The cab bounced against unevenly paved roads, and Tom leaned back in his seat. They shouldn’t be so far from their hotel, now that they were nearing downtown. “Isn’t this place lovely?”

Peter was poring over the newspaper. He looked up, pinched brows easing out. “Oh? Sure. I’ve never been here before; it’s quite nice.”

“Is something the matter, Peter?” Tom inclined towards the newspaper, scratching lightly at the bandage on his nose. It itched the most.

“Seems like the press has caught up with the investigation,” Peter replied, flipping a page. News of the luggage discovered under the _ Robert S. Fanshaw _ pseudonym and speculations about Dickie’s disappearance - and likely suicide, as the journalist had cheerfully added - were being reported again, though no headlines this time. “It’s just piecemeal,” he added. “This feels unofficial. Like Herbert Greenleaf didn’t intend for this to get on the news.”

“He has good reasons not to,” Tom said. Peter fixed him with questioning eyes. “Mr. Greenleaf has… concerns, about—”

“...about Freddie?” Peter’s eyes blinked into glistening compassion. “I hope that’s not the case. It would break Mrs. Greenleaf’s heart, poor old woman.”

“I should write back to them.” Tom remembered Mr. Greenleaf’s letter.

Peter agreed immediately. “We do as soon as we get to the hotel,” he said, and Tom patted his white knuckles on the crumpled edge of the newspaper.

The sky had gotten purplish blue by the time they arrived at the fancy front hall of _ Odeon_, a pretty old hotel in the middle of Monastiraki. A bellboy loaded their luggage on a cart and rolled it away. Peter went to check in at the reception. Tom - poor, patched-up Tom Ripley with his face all wrapped in bandages - was understandably advised to stay seated in a plush armchair by any hotel staff who spoke English. And it was there that the calm ended and the storm came, in the form of Meredith Logue. 

She had a newspaper in hand; it was in English, meaning she must have sought it out specifically, and it was crumpled in her grip. She didn’t so much as glance at Tom even though he was a few strides away at best. Barely holding back her agitation she came right up to Peter. “I met Dickie, just on the dock of that damned ship— I _ met _ him. He couldn’t be running off somewhere with a fake name. Peter, you’re one of the last few people who knew him, that I know, and I…”

“I’m afraid you know him better than I do at this point, Meredith,” Peter said with weary patience. “Marge would agree, I’d wager.”

Meredith didn’t seem the least embarrassed by this. She frowned at Marge’s mention. “Okay, I admit, I didn’t say everything when I met you and Marge at the cafe. But that was because I didn’t want to, you know. Upset her further.” She gulped hastily. “But I swear, I've talked to Dickie. We were just on the deck, and he said he’d been avoiding the police—”

“The police?” Peter asked. The sudden intrigue in his tone sent chills down Tom’s spine. As he was right now, beaten on his own volition, Tom wouldn’t be able to subdue Peter even if they weren’t in public. And quite frankly, he’d stopped envisioning such an undertaking for a while.

Tom left the armchair and came over to Peter's side, momentarily breaking the flow of their conversation. “Meredith, what a surprise to see you here. What are you…”

Meredith didn’t spare him a second glance. She was unamused, and most importantly, didn’t see a person behind all the bandages and the bruises. “Who’s this?”

_ As if I’m not here _ . Tom held out a hand and was overjoyed to find Meredith merely staring at it, eyes narrowed. He retreated. “Tom. Tom Ripley.” His voice was distinctly, obviously Tom Ripley, half an octave higher than Dickie’s baritone and then some. “How do you do? You don’t remember me, I believe.”

She reacted the way she usually did to the name Tom Ripley: flat indifference. “No, I don’t.”

“...I'm terribly sorry, Meredith,” Peter cut in again. Tom delighted at the cold politeness in his voice. “I would've helped you if I could. But I truly have not seen him, nor heard anyone else speak of seeing him.”

Meredith looked like she'd just been slapped. “Are you calling me a liar? My aunt saw him too. My relatives—” 

“No, no,” Peter placated, perfunctorily, “I merely—”

“You,” she cut in, her eyes suddenly on Tom. She squinted. Tom gripped Peter's sleeve, and Peter took a step forward, putting himself between him and Meredith, who continued. “You and this, Tom Ripley are… quite close, aren't you?”

Her gaze had shifted back to Peter as she crossed her arms. She’d almost scrunched her nose in the little pause between _ this _ and _ Tom Ripley _ the way someone would steel themselves before picking up a dirty piece of trash. The threat in her tone made Tom's blood boil.

Peter didn't budge. “We are good friends.” 

“Better friends than you and Dickie?”

Tom saw Peter visibly pale. _ His reputation_, Tom thought, angry. Peter’s ways might be no secret to some, especially to the likes of Meredith, rich and gossipy, but in certain people were less forgiving. He tightened his grip on Peter’s sleeve. If he could kill that woman right now...

“I know what you’re implying, Meredith,” Peter said, with no threat nor contempt whatsoever. His resigned sincerity earned him a look of shock from both Meredith and Tom. “Please, none of that. Tom has a fiancée.” He paused, and Tom couldn’t think of a lie of his own that had ever pained him this badly. Peter did not falter, thankfully. “Making a rumor out of this would do more harm than good for the investigation, nor would it make you feel better about Dickie being… elusive. I know you are upset and reasonably so, and I will do what I can to help, but there is no use in hurting me.”

Meredith swallowed. Tom felt sick to the stomach. Peter finally shifted his stance a little bit, briefly placing a hand on Tom’s shoulder and that hand trembled. Peter’s smile was wan. “Well?”

“I suppose,” she rasped. “There’s no use in hurting _ you_. Apologies,” she said, by way of excusing her leave rather than out of sorry. She was short of bumping into a housekeeping woman as she left, nose in the air. Peter didn’t wait until the clicks of her heels fade down the hall, to whip around to face Tom. All the calmness he’d displayed before Meredith melted away in a heartbeat. He looked red, nervous, like that time when he’d woken up to find that Tom had slept in his bed to keep him from sleepwalking. “I’m sorry, Tom. I can explain.”

Now Tom was genuinely confused. “What are you sorry about? Meredith? She’s always been like that, I told you, she—”

“No, I…” Peter shook his head. “That kind of rumor would mean… not much, if it’s about me. I haven’t told you about my... I don’t know if you know that I—”

_So it was not his reputation he was thinking of, but mine. _“I do,” Tom reassured gently. “I know. Peter? I have a thing I should’ve told you sooner too. That’ll make us even.”

Peter’s mouth hung open in an unsaid _ What_. Tom smiled and sighed and his heart felt lighter than day. “I don’t have any fiancée.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "They look in love," Tom whispered, reverent.
> 
> "If they were, it wouldn’t last," Peter said. "Wouldn’t be allowed to."

Their room in _ Odeon _ had a balcony with a view. Tom could almost make out the Parthenon on the acropolis from there. There was a set of table and chairs out there, and he had laid out his paper and pen and ink out there, with two glasses of water. He didn’t need drinks, not when the pink sunset and Peter’s warmth pressed to his shoulder already made a perfect cocktail.

Peter didn’t say a thing as Tom wrote; he had several pages of his score with him and was chewing the end of his pencil, brows furrowed in concentration. Sunset truly had never seemed so beautiful, Tom thought as he spared the setting sun not a single glance.

_ c/o American Express_   
_Athens_

_ — _

_ Dear Mr. Greenleaf: _

_ I am sincerely sorry that due to circumstances I have not been able to write to you until today. While travelling from Venice to Athens, I have come across Meredith Logue, with whom I am briefly acquainted. Meredith claimed that she had met Dickie on the same ship we had boarded - us including Peter. We were as astounded by this as you probably are, hearing this. She appeared to be convinced enough to announce that she would be searching for him herself. _

_ I do not know Meredith Logue very well, and neither does Peter, although I am fairly sure Peter knows a great deal more than I do. Nevertheless, neither of us had the impression that she had been lying. I personally suspect it could be a case of mistaken identity. I wouldn’t dare to overstate or to conclude anything, at this stage. There is a possibility that she might contact you in the near future, in any case. _

_ As for Di Massimo, I must regretfully inform you that I do not know a great deal about this musician. Dickie had mentioned him to me, in passing, and I have met him once during a gala. I have very little recollection in regards to his appearance: he was tall and pale and did not seem to be from Mongibello, was all I gathered. On the occasions that Dickie spent his time with Di Massimo - which had become increasingly frequent as time passed, now that I recall - it was usually exclusive. Marge did not know and if I learned, I would be explicitly barred from joining. I had not thought much of it at the time. _

_ I would like to let you know once more that I sympathize deeply with you both, and with the new developments I now have my hopes up about Dickie’s return. I am ever ready at your disposal, should the need ever arise. I promise to supply any required information in as much detail as you or the police would need, to my best ability. _

_ Please give my kindest regards to Mrs. Greenleaf. Please let me hear from you as soon as possible. By the time you address me your next letter, I would most likely have already been back at my previous address in Venice. _

_ Most sincerely yours, _   
_ Tom Ripley _

Tom offered Peter a brief read-through. For a second Peter had seemed like he wanted to decline. Peter, Tom had learned, was the opposite of what one would call a gossiper, as he actively sought to shield himself from being in contact with rumors, almost as if the pettiness of them would permeate into him just by being listened to. “Just so you know the plans,” Tom added, smiling, and Peter took the letter, read it, and handed it back to him with a nod.

He folded the letter, didn’t need to look to know that Peter was leaning back and regarding him. Peter hadn’t asked him a thing of substance ever since they settled in their room, and this silence should have worried Tom. But they had been laughing while unpacking and joking about the bathtub large enough to house both of them. Peter’s eyes were too tender for him to worry.

“You’ve got something in mind,” Tom pointed out gently. 

Peter placed his pencil on the table and stretched a little. “Why did you lie about being engaged?” He said it quickly, glossing over the word _ lie _ as though he was afraid any weight would turn it into an accusation. If Peter was afraid of being needlessly accusatory at all he could have simply kept quiet, Tom thought. He could have phrased it differently; instead with his question he had affirmed it was a lie. Perhaps it wasn’t Tom’s nonexistent fiancée that troubled him, rather the act of lying itself.

He had told Peter many a lie. He could afford another one… but until when? He was wearing a skin woven of lies and every time he patched up a hole with more lies, his veil would tear elsewhere, threadbare wounds with edges sharp enough to bite a man. Two men. Could have been three. The thought made his chest clench and Tom began, "I made it up on a spur."

Peter looked at him patiently with doe-eyed gravity, but he was open and trustful and reassuring and Tom no longer wondered how far his tale should stretch because he was going to tell the truth. After all, he had told Peter many a truth as well, more than he had to anyone else in his lifetime.

"...On a spur, when I was talking to Marge and Dickie. I don't know what, we were just talking, and it seemed like a fashionable thing, to be engaged. Awfully childish of me, is it?" He smiled sadly at Peter's small noise of protest. "Lies start off small like that, my dear Peter. I made her up in my mind, she looked like a friend of mine back in New York. No harm in that, right? Then when I was being questioned by Inspector Verrecchio, I… I was— well, I panicked. I needed some kind of, of alibi, so I thought of her again. My imaginary Valentine." He laughed quietly at himself. "It's a habit I've had since I was young, making up stories for myself, imaginary people… Sometimes I forgot they didn't exist. I know what you're thinking. No, this isn't the first time it's gotten me in trouble."

"You're not _ in trouble_," Peter laughed at the turn of phrase. "I just wanted to know. You know, I was… awfully relieved to hear that."

Tom shifted closer. "Hear what? That I made up a fiancée, or that I didn't do it on purpose?"

Peter just shook his head _nevermind_. In the coral light of the setting sun, his cheeks were tipsily colored, and so were his content, curved lips. A humid, warm breeze tangled in his hair. Tom admired him, then Peter's gaze drifted back into his and their eyes met slowly, softly, unabashedly. Peter was holding something back when he said, "You know, you're…"

"Yes?"

"You're older than me for sure and _ you _ don't have a fiancée either."

It was laughter that Peter had been holding back; nothing but laughter, warm like a spring. Truth worked on Peter better than the most elaborate lie Tom could tell.

—

"We only have today, right?" Tom asked, spreading jam on his buttered toast. It was a little before nine in the morning, early enough that the café wasn't packed. From the sound of it, most of the other tables were occupied by foreigners as well; they spoke Italian, German, French, English. American English, to be exact, from some couple in a nearby table behind him.

Peter took a sip of tea. Tom watched the Adam's apple bob once on his pale throat. "Yes, since they wanted us to rehearse several days in a row," Peter said, set his cup down, and Tom glanced away. "So we had better make good use of our time."

"Don't they usually go see the Parthenon?" Tom suggested. He suddenly had the feeling he was being watched. No, there was no such thing. Meredith was nowhere to be found; he'd looked to be sure. He shrugged the feeling away before Peter caught up to it.

"They do. Do you want to? It looks quite sunny up there. It's going to be hot today." Peter hummed. "I'm not against the idea, in any case."

"I hate the sun," Tom muttered, and Peter chimed in, in a low voice, "So do I." Tom gave a laugh, incredulous that Peter had felt the need to test the waters with him. He rose and walked over, stopping on the way to take the chance and muss up dark combed hair - with Peter's stature it was a rare occasion to be standing over him. "Pick a museum. I'm going to the restrooms."

He felt like there were eyes on his back all the way. He told himself it was nothing. It was probably just Peter. By the time he was back, the feeling was gone. Tom took his seat again, and breakfast resumed. 

It was a short ride from the cafe-restaurant to the National Archaeological Museum. The museum laid splayed between patches of green grass and white-hot pavement. They crossed the threshold and, as soon as they managed to orient themselves in the halls, Tom found himself hopelessly drawn to the Antiquity collection. He wandered down the halls, admiring vases and ancient jewelries and elaborate instruments. They, as well as the marble statues, were stunning in their own right, but it was the tapestries and murals that rendered Tom speechless. There he saw proofs of wealth and conviviality and the lives once lived, by people not that different from himself. He found himself standing breathless before a tomb fresco, its colors faded in pigment yet vibrant with the fabric of time. Two male figures, one bearded and one smooth-faced, were portrayed laying on a couch, faces drawing close, limbs tangled, hands intimate. He could imagine it, the buttery brush of skin against skin, the warmth of the lamp licking over their bare shoulders...

On the small metal plate displayed beside the mural, the only word in English was what seemed to be the title of the relic - _ Ritual _. The rest of the legend was in Greek and Italian. 

"_Paiderastia_," Peter said all of a sudden, peering over Tom's shoulder, no doubt reading the legend. Tom gave a start; he'd barely paid attention to the echoing footsteps. "A relationship between a citizen, the _ erastes _ \- that's probably the one right there - and a citizen-to-be, the _ eromenos _ \- I guess that's the boy. They would engage in… bonding activities.”

Tom bit down a smile. “They’re fondling each other.”

“It's part of his coming of age." Peter was struggling to keep a straight face too. “Can’t you see?”

"What does it mean, _ erastes _ and _ eromenos_?"

"_Lover _ and _ beloved_."

"They look in love," Tom whispered, reverent.

"If they were, it wouldn’t last," Peter said. "Wouldn’t be allowed to. Being _ eromenos _ was reserved for youths. Once the youth became a man and a citizen, he was not to lay beneath another man."

Tom looked at the fresco again. He thought of Moreschi and boy sopranos like him who were forever caged in boyhood; he thought of Peter-in-his-mind, young Peter Smith-Kingsley with scratches over his milky legs running between berry bushes under the Irish summer sun; of himself, Tom Ripley, running after Aunt Dottie’s car, scared senseless of being left behind, laughed at, called names, _sissy_, _sissy_, _sissy_. Boys, all boys, they were, and yet, such different fates they have met. He wondered what had become of the youth in the image.

The orchestra met up briefly that evening; they were supposed to go for dinner, but so many of them were broken off into smaller groups and couldn’t agree on anything, so in the end, to each their own. Peter introduced him to the musicians, Veronica the concertmaster and Arnold the contrabassist, and Margarita and Alessandro the twin vocalists, and more faces and more names and more handshakes that Tom committed to memory. And then there was Carlino, their manager, with a massive white beard and no hair on his head at all. He looked even more the part of a true _ nonno _ when he spoke perfect - British - English in a thick, rough voice. “Sometimes I feel like a parent,” Carlino sighed with a kindly smile, earning a row of joking _boo_s from the musicians. “It’s a compliment! I call my troupe my _ troupeau _ \- my herd!” He had a rolling, rounded laugh.

“Carlino has a theatre company in Venice,” Margarita supplied brightly.

“In name only, my girl. You all seem to forget my wife founded it. Letizia runs the whole thing. With this concert and our _ Apollo et Hyacinthus _ both running right now, I’d be dead without her. We’re always recruiting, somehow,” Carlino said, and turned to Tom with a small _ Ah_. He held out his hand by way of greeting. His grip loosened in the handshake when his eyes seemed to finally land on Tom’s bandages in a worried look. “What happened to you there, young man?”

“It was a bar fight,” Tom said shyly. Somebody - Luca the violist, was he? - whistled. They looked impressed, slightly. Peter was obviously biting back a grin, after translating. Tom added, “Don’t worry, it’s a one-timer. I don’t usually start fights.”

“We must still find something to keep you occupied.” Carlino tutted good-naturedly. He glanced at his watch, clasped Peter on the shoulder, kissed off the violinists, and they all parted ways.

The next few days were reserved for rehearsals. In the morning Peter, on his way to the Concert Halls, would drop Tom at the Penrose Library - one of the few English libraries in Athens. During every of those days, Tom whiled away amidst history books; he sought out writing of life in Athens, on youths and men, on _ paiderastia_. There were heroic lays, tales of treachery; there were rules and guides, duties of the citizen and virtues of the man, but there was no love story that would spring on the soil of pederastic companionship. He never really found the happy ending he was looking for.

In the evening Peter, on his way back from rehearsal, would pick Tom up from the library and they would both head to an eatery, before crashing in their suite. During every of those nights, when Peter returned from the Concert Halls tired, pink-faced and breathlessly chatty, Tom would look at his bright eyes and thought to himself how could he have ever imagined wringing the life out of this man. He could not, ever again.

—

The spotlight was not on Peter but he looked radiant all the same.

Peter had his back to the audience. Tom could have had a balcony seat, posed at an inclined angle where Tom could see more than his mere silhouette from the back, and with better acoustic on top of that. But here, on the near front row and shifted nearly to the furthermost seat, he was closer to him. Black suited Peter like sleek mahogany cradling ivories; unable to taint, unable to mingle, they contrasted his light and sung his ballad. From Brahms to Bach, Schubert to Strauss, he dialogued with the orchestra with his entire body and no word, drawing music into the crisp air without the use of a baton like there was magic ready at his fingertips. Expressive without being extravagant, his movements had the modesty of a mute swan, devotion over passion, all dignified artistry. 

Peter stayed in the wings during intermission. Tom went out into the marble hallway, conscious of the kind of crowd he once again find himself in - silk and feather, polished shoes, red lips and gleaming earrings, hollow smiles. At least this time there would be no unpleasant surprise: Meredith was probably lying somewhere on a white beach in Santorini, and Tom couldn’t think of anyone else who had known him as Dickie Greenleaf and who could be loitering about in the Athens Concert Hall. He nearly dropped his cigarette when somebody tapped his shoulder. 

“Tom.” Carlino greeted him with a gentle smile. “My, do you look pale. What’s happened?”

“I just need some air,” Tom said, earning from Carlino a laugh and a shake of the head. 

“You are full of reasons,” Carlino hummed, not unkindly. “Didn’t we say last time we should keep you occupied? I have a task for you. You see,” he gestured, drawing Tom’s attention to the white stone shelf on their side, where two bouquets were neatly propped. One was composed with carnations, roses and lythrum; the other lacing lilies, chrysanthemums and coriander. “These are for the musicians; usually the conductor and the first violin. Unfortunately I am all on my own. Won’t you help out an old man here?”

Tom agreed, and Carlino nodded approvingly. “Then choose one of these and tell me who you want to give them to, alright?”

—

In blinding light and deafening applauds, time thickened to a stop. Clutching onto the bouquet in his hand, the last material feeling he could vaguely perceive, Tom walked the little steps leading onto the stage in a daze, towards Peter. Peter who was dressed in black, Peter whose brows glistened with sweat and creased with eye-crinkling smiles. Peter who, upon seeing him, opened his arms, and Tom picked up his pace. His steps turned into strides; still, he had the sense to stop before the points of their shoes brushed. Tom held out the bouquet - pure white, demure, glowing in the stagelight - to Peter, feeling a little oafish standing there, too giddy to stop smiling. If he’d been simpering, so be it; Peter took the bouquet with one hand and pulled Tom in with the other in a half-embrace. For just a heartbeat they were chest to chest, Peter’s earlobe brushed Tom past the tip of the nose, and under the cologne Tom caught a note of rosin. 

—

“Do it again, Tom Ree-pley!”

Tom nodded at the cheery vocalist, smiling humbly. With no help from Carlino (“You young’uns make your choice and I’ll follow, is all I promise”) the musicians had decided on having their celebratory drinks at a nearby bar. Tom was there because nobody opposed to him coming— no, because Peter had a hand on his elbow and his guilty, pink-faced look said _ I don’t want to leave you on your own _. He spared Peter the deliberation and asked to join anyway. So here they were, taking up an entire counter, and Tom was speaking in Peter’s careful, gentle manner, in his rich timbre, complete with his British accent and the way he tended to jerk his head to a side when he talked. “I remember her, what’s her name— agh, I spent a Christmas at their place, hmm…”

Peter laughed into his glass, delightfully flushed. “Must you, Tom?”

“I meant everything as a compliment,” Tom quipped in Peter’s voice, making it out to be a joke but it wasn’t. It was an impossible honor for him to ever wear Peter’s skin; and he would be damned before he let such a thought cross his mind again. Tom resumed his American accent at once. “It’s not unflattering, the way you speak. Right?” Tom asked around, earning a row of acquiescence and a bashful chuckle from Peter. He grinned at Peter, hoping the dim lights kept others from seeing the colors drained from his face. He would not see any harm come to Peter, he’d decided, yet the germs of madness seemed to still be buried there somewhere, every time such morbidity intruded his mind and left him in goosebumps. “Now, who’s next?”

“Me!” Helena waved her hand - she was a cellist who made up for her diminutive stature with her impeccable triple-stops and vivacious pizzicato. “My voice is mezzo-soprano. Bet you can’t do that,” she said in Italian. Peter translated, throwing in an edge of playful challenge of his own, and Tom spoke in falsetto and was very aware of and very gladdened by Peter’s wide eyes and gasp of amusement. Then Margarita challenged him to her soprano voice, which he took graciously, adding in her little shrugs and habitual nose-scrunch for good measure. Then Luca, then Arnold, then Carlino spoke up but it wasn’t to challenge Tom.

“Say, Tom, have you ever acted on stage?”


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His smile was brilliant enough to make up for the grey clouds haunting the Venetian sky for the day. He never dropped the habitual apology for making Tom wait. Once, Tom had said, “Stop being so formal,” only for his heart to swell with endearment when Peter breathed a, “But I do feel sorry to leave your side.”

The papers in Venice - mostly the tabloids - had caught up on the news of the investigation, the development and, somehow, _ Di Massimo_. It didn’t make it onto first, or second, or even third page; and, curiously, there was nothing about the alias _ Robert S. Fanshaw _ or Dickie’s scratched out passport left at American Express Naples. Either Mr. Greenleaf had been very discreet in feeding information to the press, or not discreet enough in keeping nosy journalists at bay. Tom did not stop at the newspaper stand long after he’d gotten what he wanted. He tucked the newspaper into his bag and walked into the bookstore. It was a small one, across from the post office. Peter was over there sending a packet, and Tom waited for him to resume their trip - they were on their way to Carlino’s on the other side of town. He passed his time wandering the dusty shelves. Old books, used books, books carrying the chicken scratch and dog-ear creases and beyond, marks of their former owners. _ Fingerprints_, he thought suddenly, chest panging with dread. If they found his fingerprints on Dickie’s things - not outside, but on the lining of the suitcases, on a mouthpiece of the saxophone, at a corner of an expensive shirt, underneath the typewriter, faded at the edge of the metal plate that once was on Freddie Miles’ car. Too many, too specific, to be coincidental…

He wound up before a row marked _ Poetry_. Not for him, Tom thought, not these verses so dainty they seemed delicate even next to his frail daydreams. Idly, he ran a finger across faded, thin spines. They were all in Italian anyway. It’s one thing to read poems in your mother tongue, and another to contemplate foreign words arrange themselves together in a fashion that should have stirred something in you. You know the words but you don’t feel the letters. His finger stopped at _ L _ authors and he pulled out a random volume. It was black and white and reminded him of piano keys. Tom flipped through it, easing his cold dread with the smell of yellowed pages. He put it down when he heard Peter’s greeting, over from the threshold.

Peter didn’t ask; he seemed to recognize the small book in his hand, making an amused little sound at its title. His smile was brilliant enough to make up for the grey clouds haunting the Venetian sky for the day. He never dropped the habitual apology for making Tom wait. Once, Tom had said, “Stop being so formal,” only for his heart to swell with endearment when Peter breathed a, “But I do feel sorry to leave your side.”

Now, Peter was standing close, enough for Tom to imagine his nose buried in his hair. “Lorca, hm? Do you like surrealism too?”

“I don’t know him.” The truth slipped from his sheepish smile before he caught it. Tom was surprised; it was so easy. “Or surreal art, for that matter. Do you?”

A curve played across his lips.. “Not particularly well.”

“Please, you know everything,” Tom teased. 

“I do not,” Peter shook his head, insistent. Then his eyes softened. “I’ve read one poem of his, a translation only. _ Ode to Salvador Dali _. Dali is an artist; his dear friend. Very dear, and still alive.” Another name Tom did not know, yet the self-consciousness was emitting from Peter rather than him, oddly. “Are you getting this?”

“If there’s the poem you like in it?”

Peter’s melancholy was brief as passing cloud. He smiled; the sun was back. “There isn’t.”

“Then let’s leave the book here. I’ll have you recite it to me yourself tonight.”

“I don’t know it by heart, you cruel man. You sound like my répétiteur.” Peter laughed fondly. Tom was struck with a chord of pride and envy at the unnamed man. “Come, Carlino’s expecting us.”

When they arrived, Tom learned that it was less Carlino and more Letizia who had been expecting them. Carlino’s wife who ran the theatrical company, he remembered; this was the first time he’d met her. “Mine too,” Peter had whispered when Tom’s hand was caught in her unslacking grip. She shook hands, did not kiss. Her eyes were sharp and weighing, her smile panther-like, her voice every bit that of an instructor’s. She was not unkind, but none of Carlino’s leniency could be found even in her warmest of tones. Letizia began politely, but straightforward, because they had discussed it with Carlino before, informal as it had been: the Mimesis Company wanted Tom Ripley in their upcoming production, _ Apollo et Hyacinthus_. A play adapted from Mozart’s opera of the same name, which was in itself the retelling of the Greek myth. Tom would not even have to audition; Letizia would decide. For all the praises Carlino had sung him, she still wanted to see for herself who this young man was. 

“You will have to know Italian,” she warned. Her English was laced with accent, but it was good. “Not just speak. You will act in Italian.” Tom nodded.

“I will learn.” 

Peter squeezed his shoulder. “Tom is talented. I’m sure he will.”

—

Mr. Greenleaf sent a long letter. 

Tom was sitting on the floor in the living room when Peter found him. It had gotten unusually chilly for this time of the year. The heater was not on and coldness seeped through the rug into his sprawled limbs, but he did not budge. Peter was saying something that sounded blurred, faraway, as though Tom was underwater. His dark eyes had a way of looking wide and heartbreakingly lost where most people would have squinted with brows furrowing so hard. If Peter had seen the envelope on the coffee table, he didn’t say anything about it. Tom mustered a smile. 

He couldn’t tell Peter that he was _ terrified_. He couldn’t just tell Peter that in Herbert Greenleaf had been contacted by an imaginary artist Tom had made up - because Peter did not know he was made up, either. _ Di Massimo wrote me, _ said the words neatly typewritten on crisp paper with the elaborate _ Greenleaf _ letterhead, _ stating that he had seen his name in the papers and the description matches him, and he has been sought out by the police. _According to the letter that this supposed Di Massimo had sent, he had known Dickie for a time but had not seen him for a few months before his disappearance and had no knowledge of Dickie’s whereabouts, nevermind traveling with him. Fanshaw was also mentioned as a name with which he had seen Dickie sign a few postcards before; he had thought nothing of it, assuming it was, quote, “normal for Americans to have aliases”. And he couldn’t have read about it anywhere because the name Fanshaw had been purposely withheld, Mr. Greenleaf explained, in order to avoid copycats or prankers. Even Marge had not been told. 

_ The letter appears authentic_, wrote Mr. Greenleaf. Tom felt like bursting out laughing. He had never told anyone about Di Massimo, save for the police and Fausto while he was in Rome, and Dickie. Was this the ghost of Dickie’s doing? No, but even they did not know about the alias under which he’d signed his luggage in Naples. Hysterical, wasn’t it, how the invented person became not only so real in his mind but had also materialized?

The only good news was that, perhaps, after a while, the futile search would convince Herbert Greenleaf to give up. That Dickie had traded his identity for another to run off with a man he fancied. Or that Dickie had erased his own identity before taking his own life and left his baggage behind under a borrowed name, a borrowed life, without anyone’s knowledge or consent. Whichever it would be, Tom did not care - so long as it got the case cold or closed for good.

To Peter, he said, “I’m alright. I‘m just, starving.” He left the letter like it was nothing important on the table and rose, feeling pinprick all over his numbed feet coming back to life. They ushered each other into the kitchen, Tom asking Peter about his day, and Peter asking Tom about his. And it was all good again.

—

“Shift your feet to the right— yes, like that. Your arm, a bit back. There.” Letizia paused, as if to assess the entire posture. Tom did as told, hoping her artistic visions were satisfied this time. He was wearing a single tunic, his feet bare, and it was not very warm in the studio. Finally the woman nodded her approval. “Good.”

“You can smile a little if you want, Tom,” said Carlino, moving the camera a little on its stand. “Ready?” Tom nodded. The flash blinked, once, twice. He did smile a little. It had gotten very easy to slip into the character. For the past few weeks, Tom had been submerged in _ Apollo et Hyacinthus_, reading the script, learning Italian with Peter, listening to the operette, bonding with the team, rehearsing, reading more, learning more, listening more, bonding more. Hyacinth, prince of Sparta, young and sweet and golden-hearted, a gentle brother, a darling friend - the role seeped into him as natural as blue sky on a sunny day. Tom had, after all, a live muse for his portrayal.

They called it a day then, and Tom could not help a thankful shiver when he had his jacket draped over his shoulders again. Peter pulled the garment snug across his frame, a hand kept there as though worried it would slip off, and Tom didn’t mind. He took his glasses back from Peter, fiddling them in his hands, not putting them on yet. They were new glasses, new frame, half-rimmed. His old pair was starting to feel dangerously loose at the screws after having braved the fight that Tom had put it through, even in the inner pocket of his jacket. Peter had insisted on getting him new ones. “Think of it as a loan, then,” he’d said, “and you can pay back later if you want. You have a job now.” By all means, Peter was right. The photoshoot had been staged for his character Hyacinthus, meant for to be used for later promotional materials for the play. 

He was happy. Rehearsals were going swimmingly. There was no letter from Mr. Greenleaf, nothing reported on by the press save for a few caricatures on some niche satirical papers. Nothing about Dickie’s luggage or Di Massimo or Robert S. Fanshaw or fingerprints. And Peter was wearing the look of someone who had a not-so-well-kept secret to spill, Tom could see, when he exited the dressing room. He placed a hand flat on Peter’s chest. “What is it, Peter?”

“I have an idea for spring break,” Peter said, covering Tom’s hand with his own. He lingered for just half a heartbeat too long before using it to bring Tom’s hand down and away. “I looked at the weather. It’s going to snow in Cortina.”

The name _ Cortina _ was not a pretty sound. Cortina had been the stillborn dream of a Dickie that still seemed like the sunlight to him. Now it was only hollow, but because it was hollow, it clanged horribly. Tom did not grimace.

“It’s already March. If we don’t go then we’d have to wait a whole other seven months or so,” Peter finished, unknowingly. “What do you say?” 

Tom raced to answer before Peter catch onto his grim remembrance. “I want to, but, Peter… I’ve never skied before.”

Peter answered at once like it was the most natural conclusion on earth. “Well then, we need to get you some equipments.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I know I’m making myself look foolish; you have no reason to think you’re in danger. But I say this as someone who cares deeply about you, Peter. Do me a favor and watch your steps for me, would you? No one knows the future. We still need to see each other again..._

The fact that he barely had any winter clothing before he moved to Venice would have been suspicious if not for the blissful excuse that he had been in Naples previously. Cold, yes, but he survived, evidently. The real reason, that he had had Dickie’s wardrobe, was less appropriate than his corduroy jacket in the face of a snowstorm. 

Tom had had little chance to care about clothes before, when the entirety of his belongings could fit into a single worn suitcase as he made his way out of the rundown basement where he’d lived. As Dickie Greenleaf he’d had a fat wallet and a quasi-obligation to look nice, which he had embraced composedly. He had gotten his suits tailored, his shoes made, his ties embroidered, his old glasses tucked away in a pocket. It had felt new, but there had been little thrill in the novelty, uncomparable to the mad heartbeat of a butcher, and shrouded by a sense of duty. His lack of weather-appropriate clothing for a ski trip was, in turn, an excuse it itself, to enrich Tom Ripley’s wardrobe.

The store they had come to was no classy boutique. A little bit off-center from downtown, the road to reach it was still paved with uneven, shiny stones, but the building itself was less and more practical. Behind the glass door was an interior made to emulate a vacation cabin, with wood lining the inner walls and a real fireplace in one wall. Half the store was dedicated to skates and skis, bottles and goggles, compasses and Swiss knives, flashlights and first-aid kits; the other half housed rows of windbreakers, snow-proof pants, woolen socks and thermal gloves.

“You only need boots. We’ll rent the slides when we get there,” Peter said, scanning the aisle of sweaters. “I haven’t had mine in years, and I don’t like to pack them either.”

“Right, I only need boots. That doesn’t explain this,” he lifted his armful of clothes: waterproof jacket, gloves and socks, but also a woolen shirt. He’d spent a good moment studying the _ Merino puro _ tag and the price tag underneath with steadfast apprehension.

Peter only laughed and pulled out a fleece sweater. “Leave them here and sit down, Tom.” He topped the pile with the garment, then knelt. Tom took his seat, set his jaws taut, swallowed hard. Ski boots needed to fit well and snug for safety, so he needed to try them on. He could have done it himself, but the store clerk had passed the boots directly to Peter’s waiting hand, and now Peter was on his knees. Dark hair fell in stray strands over his forehead as he crouched. _ His lashes _, Tom thought. He felt warm, so he looked down, fixed his gaze on the boot laces. They were a stark beige against black leather. Peter’s hands were also a stark paleness against the strap he’d secured.

“Is it tight?” Peter looked up. The boots felt hefty on Tom’s feet.

_ Tight? It is_. Tom blinked, exhaled. “It fits just right.” He smiled weakly. He was still warm.

—

_ Of jealousy—  
_ _ Out of jealousy— _

How desperate, he thought.

_ On gentle wings, swiftly,  
_ _ Zephyr carried _

A pretty turn of phrase would not change what he had done.

_ His last breath _

“His blood,” he might have said aloud, “is on your hand.”

_ Away. _

—

Days grew longer as spring trotted towards summer. Skies brightened. Lovers started to stroll down the Bridge of Sighs. The papers were scrubbed clean of the Greenleaf investigation, after a dismal one-column article reporting nothing but the continuous dead ends. By late March, the scenes had all been worked out, costumes had been fitted, the actors had made good friends out of one another. Tom had grown his hair out for the role. Peter had finalized a quintet arrangement for _ Requiem _ to be performed in London in late May. Their train tickets to Cortina were ready.

Two days before they left for Cortina, they got a letter from Marge. To Peter. A sad little letter, Tom thought, when Peter showed it to him. She had gotten back to the States along with Herbert Greenleaf and had not had the chance to cross the Atlantic again for the ongoing investigation. _ As if that would make any difference_. She was glum, but at least chummy, in her roundabout greetings and rambling about her book and asking of whether Peter had been in contact with the Italian police. She never mentioned Tom, though she might as well have said so when she wrote, _ Meredith Logue had written me; would you imagine! She had something interesting to tell. You did meet her in Athens, didn’t you? _ Her tone grew careful, padded with implications. Towards the end, Marge said:

_ …I know I’m making myself look foolish; you have no reason to think you’re in danger. But I say this as someone who cares deeply about you, Peter. Do me a favor and watch your steps for me, would you? No one knows the future. We still need to see each other again, maybe this summer? What do you think?... _

Peter could have replied then and send before they left for their train. Instead, he said, “I’ll write her when we get back.” Tom placed the letter back in his hand, an excuse for him to linger his fingers against Peter’s palm. He smiled. Cortina was theirs, and Peter was _ his _.

—

Cortina was cold and sharply blue under the lightless dusk.

“I don’t keep a cabin up here,” Peter had confessed, so earnest that Tom had not had the heart to tell him he never expected anything of the likes anyway. They came to lodge in a quaint inn, past the market square, in a snowy alley across from a tiny chapel. Tom suspected Peter knew the place. He had gone through town without asking for the way. With the speculation, Tom left it to Peter to check in at the reception, not in the mood to wrestle with the _ bella lingua_. He felt fresh as the snow piled thickly on sloped roofs. From afar, little windows shone in constellations. His breath dissolved white. The winds were husky and low as folded wings tonight.

When he came back, Peter was still lingering by the counter.

“What’s the matter?” Tom asked, confused. It was dark out, by then.

“Tom, I think,” Peter said. “The only rooms left are double. We can get two rooms, I was thinking, or find another place, if you—”

The fact alone that Peter had not decided on his own was telling enough. It wasn’t as though he had not the cash to spare. Tom could have laughed, a good tickle by a good urge to move forth. _This dance is__ a loving deadlock_. Instead, he reminded himself of the virtue of patience and made for the reception counter. “Key, please,” he said. The metal jingled in his palm, and Tom turned, touching Peter by the elbow. “Come now. I want a warm shower.”

—

The next day was clear, the light mute, and there was no telling where the limp sky ended and the pale ground began. The skeletal silhouettes of trees and the bundled-up figures of late vacationers were few and far between. Tom stood on top of the bunny slope, his pulse a marching rhythm in his ear as he stared down at the immense white on either sides of the thin horizon. They had gone through the basics; how to walk uphill, how to stop, even how to fall down. He should be fine. He had never been afraid of heights. But he couldn’t make out how far up he was from the lowest point on the ground, and that rattled him.

“Relax,” Peter said, warm breath caught in the cashmere of his scarf. “Don’t lean forward too much. There, like this. Good posture.” His hands were on his waist, firm. Under the layers of wool and fleece, Tom shivered, not from cold. “I’ll go first, alright? I’ll be right down there.”

Tom nodded and watched as the snow sprinkled up from under Peter’s slides. Peter glided down the tame slope with practiced ease. The slope was now marked with twin lines, and Tom could gauge the distance, now that Peter was looking up at him from the foot of the hill. He looked as small as a rabbit down there. _ And this was supposed to be a beginner trail? _ Tom wondered briefly if he could just stoop and roll down the hill. The powdery snow could not hurt all that much.

Peter opened his arms, probably in encouragement. Tom pushed back the poles in his hands. He stopped thinking.

There was wind in his hair. The thrill was crisp, short-lived, because it was such a small slope, but he was laughing by the time he was stopped by Peter from skiing himself squarely into a pine tree. “Again?”, Peter asked, and “Again,” Tom agreed. He conquered the bunny slopes of various height one after another. Each time it was Peter’s arms that halted him, but the initial nerves were too far gone for him to be afraid again.

They moved to a steeper slope; nothing drastic, but definitely a longer trip than the beginner trails on the small hills. “I’ll go first,” Tom said, grinning, feeling reckless. “Race you,” Peter quipped, and they did. Before him, the trail was still the same endless white. Peter was in his peripheral vision, to the side, a blur of navy blue. A race it was, Tom thought, and stabbed his skiing pole back as he sped, kicking up snow. The winds screeched past his ears as he tore through them in bliss. Faster, he thought, pushed forth. _ Race you, dear boy. _ He laughed from sheer liberation, heated by the speed and the thrill. There was nothing before him after all, nothing but endless white, nothing—

“Watch out!”

Suddenly the world was a blur. One moment he was fast enough to fly, cold air kniving into him with every breath; the next, he was sprawled on the ground, groaning, skis pointing to the ground. It didn’t hurt, but he had tumbled and rolled and gotten snow into his collar. He recalled the bleary shape of another tree trunk before Peter had swerved in front of him and…

Tom bolted up on both arms, feeling the uneven ground move underneath him. He looked down. That was not the ground he was laying on. Peter stared up at him, helmet askew and goggles already laying over his scarf.

“Dear God, Tom. That nearly gave me a heart attack,” Peter scolded breathlessly. “You could’ve gotten yourself killed.”

His chest rose and fell. His cheeks were ruddy. There was snow in his collar too. His eyes were wide, pupils blown.

“...Tom?”

Tom caught his name on Peter’s lips with his own.

—

“Nothing like a hot bath after a day out, right?”

Tom sunk further down into the steaming bathwater, the pink of his ears surely deepening. Their suite came with a handsome bathtub that must have been meant to match size with the double bed. It was large enough for the both of them, but he was here and Peter was still dressed and dry.

“Keep still,” Peter ordered softly, touching a slippery finger to the back of his neck. As if in response to his shiver, Peter ventured on, fingers trailing up, carding into wet hair, dragged against his scalp and Tom sighed. The bathroom, majestically polished, was lit bright as day, but his eyelids were heavy as though in intoxication. “Last December,” he began. “Last December, you were going to be here.”

“Mmhm.” Peter sounded drowsy. Water splashed as Tom caught Peter’s hand. He turned his head and kissed the inside of Peter’s wrist, earning a satisfactory little start. Peter twisted his hand away with a chuckle. “Yes, Marge had plans.” He was avoiding Dickie’s name, Tom knew. “They invited Freddie Miles and I. And you.”

Tom could hear a smile in the way Peter shaped his words. “Not me.”

“No?”

“Because I’ve never skied before.” _ Because Dickie was ashamed of me. Because I listened to him and Marge fucking on a boat and Freddie Miles thought I was a voyeur. _

The fingers in his hair curled into a pleasant tug. Peter had to understand, Tom thought, half addled with sleep, that it wasn’t about skiing. That it was about the contrast between the golden trimming of Dickie’s valise and the worn corners of Tom’s diminutive suitcase.

“Now you have,” Peter whispered. Tom felt his chin on the crook of his neck, his breath against his jaw, his lips on his pulse point, chasing heartbeats. Tom closed his eyes. “Get in here with me.”

Peter pulled back without warning, leaving a gaping coldness where his touch previously had been. Tom’s eyes shot open, startled, searching. His heart thumped into his throat as he sat up rigid straight, chilled to the spine. “Peter, where are you going?”

“Why,” Peter looked to him, smiling. “To put out the light, of course.” 


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By the time Tom crawled under the covers, bathrobe untied, Peter was already looking at him expectantly.

Two months passed like a breeze, marked by the the two pilot shows of _ Apollo et Hyacinthus _ \- one private, with only Letizia’s critic friends as audience, and the other modestly public, both of which had received encouraging response. One Thursday evening, Tom lingered at the door after practice as his fellow actors kissed each other good-bye. He’d chosen today specifically; it was the only day in the week that Carlino would come by early enough to be there as Tom came up to Letizia. Carlino was the more lenient one, that much was clear, and Tom needed this favor.

He left the studio afterwards. He could have been skipping for how glad he was, how well it had gone. He had gotten a yes, and he could not wait to stumble into Peter just on the doorstep, tell him all about it, kiss his smile. It was a feat to manage his composure, and perhaps he had not done it as well as an actor should have. By the time Tom crawled under the covers, bathrobe untied, Peter was already looking at him expectantly.

“Didn’t you tell me you used to spend summer in Ireland?” Tom began. He was fairly sure his grin was giving him away. 

Peter played along with the most innocent, “Yes, why?” Tom had ever heard.

“It must have been a long time since.”

“That’s right. I stopped going there for summer when I started boarding school.” Peter let out a quiet breath, dog-eared his book and set it on the bedside table. “I was there one last time after graduation, to leave my books, before I went to university. That’s hardly a vacation.” He rolled onto his stomach; Tom had learned it was his favorite position. He looked as though he could say more, but all he did was laying his head down onto folded arms, looking up with a coy smile. _ Well?_, said his gaze.

“Do you miss it?” Tom said, paused, and then, realizing he might not be able to salvage a refusal, hurried to fill in the silence. “I mean, nostalgia aside, wouldn’t it be nice to take a vacation there again? At the end of this month? It’s summer. Your concert will be in London, anyway, and there’s—”

“Hold on.” The mattress shifted under him as Peter propped himself up, surprise written over him. “What about your schedule?”

“I asked Letizia for a week off.”

“You did _ what_?”

Tom twisted the corner of the blanket. “A week off. Just one. I wanted to go with you. I thought we could spend a… We could celebrate your birthday there. June… 3rd? Right?”

“Yes.” Peter’s whisper fanned over his neck. Tom laughed through his nose, sinking back into his pillow as the man clambered over him, kissed his nose, his mouth. “Yes, Tom, yes. Yes to everything.”

—

Venice to London was a tedious trip. The first train, old and familiar like any other Italian train he had ridden, passed by Turin and serpentined through the Swiss valleys to stop at Geneva. Their trajectory never even dipped so far as Florence. They were a safe distance from Rome, definitely nowhere near Naples, and Tom even amused himself by stopping by a newspaper stand in the station in Venice. The _ Il passo criminale _ , a tabloid filled with freak accidents and apparently occult cases, was one of the last few papers that still carried the _ American murderer on the run _ story. The headline read:

RICHARD GREENLEAF IN VIAGGIO NEL LONTANO  
NORD ITALIA SOTTO PSEUDONIMO?

Tom didn’t even skim the article. Dickie sighted in a northern village of Italy? His mind supplied him with an absurd image of Dickie in nomad tatters, trying to make a fire in the snow. He suspected some desperate faux-journalist was feeding the tabloid made-up pieces of information. Or maybe Mr. Greenleaf had realized it was a dead-end; maybe the _ Di Massimo _ from the other time was a cruel prank by someone even more talented than Tom, some rival of Greenleaf perhaps.

“What’s so funny?” Peter asked, strolling over.

“This entire thing is.” Tom flipped the newspaper closed and held it up for Peter to see the name, earning a little _ Ah _ of recognition and a pitying smile.

In Geneva they switched to an SNCF train, another long but pretty ride headed for France. The train stopped at Paris Gare-de-Lyon, a bustling platform housed in a magnificent building of ornate balconies and pretty glass panes. They had about an hour to spare until their next train to Brittany. Tasked with looking over their luggage while Peter searched for the restrooms, Tom rolled their suitcases to the nearest bench and took his seat. He was rummaging through his bag for a cigarette, when he felt shadows cast on him.

“Excusez-moi, Monsieur.”

He looked up to find two Frenchmen in police uniforms, accompanied by three familiar faces: Inspector Roverini and his subordinate, formerly responsible for the Dickie Greenleaf investigation, and Fausto, good friend to Dickie and casual Italian tutor of Tom Ripley.

“Votre passeport, s’il vous plait,” said the French officer. Tom caught a cognate of the word _ passport_. He swallowed.

A thousand thoughts rushed in his mind at once. He felt like he’d just lost his footing on treacherous ground. Like he was on the deck of a boat in a storm. He’d grown his hair out, his hair had darkened from being mostly indoors, he had lost a few pounds due to work, and he was wearing glasses. Yet there was recognition in their eyes, all of them, Roverini and Fausto. Roverini had never seen him in glasses, but he could imagine the bitter old inspector poring over pictures and pictures of Dickie, and then perhaps sought out McCarron or Verrecchia for a word on Tom Ripley. And Fausto had known both Dickie Greenleaf and Tom Ripley, well enough to distinguish between them. If the inspectors of Rome and the good-natured Mongibello local had conversed, though… they must have gotten something. A lead. Marge and the rings? Meredith and the _ Hellenes _ encounter? If Tom Ripley took out his passport now, surely they would ask him to come with them. _ Nothing serious at all Monsieur_, wouldn’t it be, _ all you need to do is to give us a nice little fingerprint _ and if Thomas Phelps Ripley truly was innocent, all would be well. Oh but he _ wasn’t_, was he? The fingerprints would turn out to match, ninety-eight percent if not a hundred, the prints on Dickie’s luggage in Naples. Tom swallowed, the scenario playing so vivid in his mind he’d stood up without realizing.

The policemen seemed to gather closer around him as though closing in on a suspect. They repeat their order, and Tom fumbled out an apology in English. Fausto, as though afraid to mingle any further, did not even offer his English. Not that it would help, anyway. Tom pretended to search through his bag, despite knowing exactly where he kept his passport. 

“Tom? What’s going on?”

Peter’s voice came as though from above. Tom felt his lips quiver, just seeing the surprise on Peter’s face, ever the open book. Peter started to speak French, gesturing to Tom once or twice. Tom felt like crying. There was no getting away from it this time; this was not their private cabin and a capricious, red-lipped woman. Peter could not possibly side with Tom against the Italian and French police, in the middle of Paris-Gare-de-Lyon. In a split second Tom wished he’d killed Peter quick and clean, sooner, saving them both the trouble. The shame that surged right afterwards was staggering; it had become an impossible fantasy, no matter the situation he found himself on.

Then Peter stopped talking and opened his jacket, pulling out what looked like two passports from the inner pocket. Tom was sure he was seeing double, then. He was likely going mad.

“Et vous êtes…?” The officer asked.

“Di Massimo, Monsieur,” Peter answered with a kind smile, handing them the passports. “Je m’appelle Frederico Di Massimo.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I tried to kill you. I said I tried to _kill_ you, Peter.”

Tom Ripley did not know what was more surprising: the fact that Peter had two - not one, but _ two _ \- faux passports made, one under the name _ Frederico Di Massimo _ and the other _ Robert S. Hall_, or the fact that it had all been done behind his back.

The policemen had no choice but to let them off, and Tom did not take another look at Inspector Roverini’s sullen glare. Peter said nothing as they made their way across the platform. He did look at Tom but only when Tom did not look back, so Tom did not. Silence between them was padded with other people’s chattering and the rustling of fabric against luggage, amalgamating into a buzz that only grew as the crowd poured from trains and onto the platform. They showed their passports - the real ones, Smith-Kingsley and Ripley, so happy once - and boarded their Paris-Brittany train. Tom kept his suitcase beside him, even inside their private cabin. His two passports, Thomas Phelps Ripley and Robert Salvador Hall, were in a chest pocket of his coat, pressed against his heart. Peter had had the passports stamped in Cortina, in Rome, even a stamp in Sicily where neither of them had ever gone. Peter the upright, unsuspecting, naive, generous, _ good _ fellow, the Peter that he knew… 

The conversation with the police kept replaying in his head even though he understood not a single word of it, a broken record as he tried to make sense of what had transpired. Peter had spoken in fluid French that he could only assume to be convincing if not perfect. He gestured to Tom again sometimes, referring to him by the name on the faux passport, a word or two Tom could catch like _ Angleterre _ and _ musicien_. His head rung as though he had been standing inside a large bell. One second he was thinking he could kill Peter now; the next he felt like pinning the man against a surface and kiss him on the mouth, with all due gratitude. It was surreal. Salvation had never felt so much like betrayal.

And then there was the first name Peter had _ Frederico. An Italian rendering of Frederick. _ His thoughts flashed back to Freddie Miles’s cursed dead weight on his shoulders, the splatter of blood that he’d scrubbed from the bust statue. Tom felt a shudder in his spine from the possibility that it was somehow a cruel reminder, from Peter of all people. 

“Tom,” Peter spoke up. He sounded hesitant; on his face Tom saw nothing but stern worry. “I… I never intended for you to find it out this way.”

“When did you… know?” Tom asked, weakly.

Peter sighed. Tom could see deliberation in the way his jaws tightened. “Well, it— In Athens. At that restaurant. You were in the restrooms, and…”

Tom remembered. Meredith’s cohort of _ co _ , they were there. The aunt and uncle; they’d taken him by the elbow at the opera and Peter knew them too and _ god why did he not remember that Peter had spent a Christmas at the Logue’s, Peter must have known them too, Tom how could you be so stupid_—

“...neither of us recognized each other when she asked me if I had been accompanying Dickie Greenleaf. She kept pressing, and when she said she was a Logue, I thought of what you had said about Meredith, and how it had seemed so… I’m sorry, Tom, it had seemed so _ off _ to me when you talked about Meredith that way, even though I did not know her so well myself.”

“Ah.” Tom uttered.

“So I told her my name was Di Massimo and you were… a friend of mine, and that she had gotten the wrong people.” Peter said, and leaned into his seat, head tilted back, eyes closed. His throat was in the open, pale, unmarred, unguarded. Tom gulped down a harsh lump. He opened and closed his hands. Peter opened his eyes again, and Tom tucked his hands into his pockets. “I thought about it afterwards. I didn’t want to blame you for something unproven, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like the only logical conclusion.

“I looked for the newspapers, from around the time Dickie was in Naples, and I looked through them. You and Dickie had never been in the same place at once, have you? Meredith said she was with Dickie at the opera, and Marge found the rings in your luggage. Tom, you don’t know how much I wanted to believe otherwise. What Dickie had done to you… No, I would not say he deserved it, but... you must have been driven into a corner. Someone like you… couldn’t have.”

_ Someone like me_, Tom thought bitterly. _ You give me too much credit, my dear Peter. _

“Freddie Miles,” Peter carried on, a pained smile twisted on his mouth. “Freddie must have been collateral damage, I figured out as much. You had... you have a secret to keep. I couldn’t be sure what is your invention and what isn’t. So I picked a name, and I wrote a letter to Herbert Greenleaf—”

“That was _ you_?”

“...Yes, that was me. I signed it as Di Massimo. I told him I saw the description on the news, that my last name was not all that common, and that I have never traveled with any Dickie.”

Tom felt like bursting out in hysterical laughter. Instead, he just stayed silent, looking at Peter, waiting for him to complete his nearly fantastical tale. His only reassurance was that Peter still seemed to take his word for it when it came to the horrid deeds of Dickie’s that Tom had invented. But could he trust Peter - or rather, trust what he assumed Peter was thinking? He didn’t know anymore.

“When I saw how you acted upon getting Mr. Greenleaf’s reply, I couldn’t stand to the side anymore. I got the passports made. I still kept some of your photos from when you first joined the Mimesis Company. That’s… all, really. It was more as… insurance, than anything. I never used them again after Cortina.”

_ Cortina. _ Another burst of vertigo hit Tom from below the diaphragm. Of course; he almost always left it to Peter to deal with inns, hotels, receptions. _ Clever boy_. 

“I swear, Tom, I did not want you to find out like this. I was hoping you would tell me yourself. I,” Peter looked down at his hands, and then up, and straight at Tom. His eyes were glassy. “I knew you were lying to me. I didn’t know what else you would do to keep the secret.”

“You know— that this... makes you complicit,” Tom said, suddenly angry. “Peter, you’re… you’ve done something illegal. You know that.” The man before him, for a split second, felt like a stranger. Either Peter had always been this crafty and Tom had been blind to it, or he had become so because of Tom. Tom didn’t know which would make him feel less sick.

“I know,” Peter said, appallingly calm.

“I tried to kill you." Tom paused to let it sink in. Peter blanched. "Were you aware of this at all?"

Slowly, Peter shook his head.

Tom could not stand it anymore. “I tried to kill you. I said I tried to _ kill _ you, Peter.” He stood and stumbled over, swift. Peter winced when Tom slammed him back against the back of his seat, hands around his throat. Not nearly tight enough to block his windpipe, but alarming enough for Peter to struggle by instincts before going still as a rabbit in a snare, resolution in his eyes as he looked up. He had given up on purpose and Tom could not understand why. “What is the matter with you? I lied to them and lied to myself and lied, lied to _ you _ , because I thought that would keep you from my, from, from me, and you _ knew all this time and didn’t even have the sense to run_— Why would you— for me, I…” Tom forced himself to stare down, just as Peter was forcing himself to stare up he was sure. “I could have killed you. I could… I can kill you.” Peter was white as a sheet, and breathing hard and quivering and his eyes were red-rimmed and moist and he looked absolutely terrified. Tom faltered. “I can kill you _ now_.” And Peter didn’t look like he doubted that one bit; his pulse raced under Tom’s palm; Tom could have sworn he saw the tiniest of nods, but Peter still didn’t fight. Did he have a death wish? No, the lights of a living man had not gone out in his eyes; he looked up almost fiercely with life and yet, what was this? How could he, how could he, how could he do this to him—

“I’m sorry.” Tom collapsed onto Peter’s stiff form with a dry sob. He gave up Peter’s throat and wounded his arms around taut shoulders instead. Peter flinched, rightfully, understandably. That was all. He was otherwise immobile as a statue. Tom cradled Peter to his chest, muttering apologies over and over again, before receding from him as gently as tidal waves leaving the wreck after havoc. 

He assumed his seat again, across from Peter, as far away from him as possible, for Peter’s sake if anything. He thought, _ why_. Peter had not given him any answer to his _ why_s. Tom had not given him a chance to answer, really; he’d pounced on him and gone for his throat and Tom had to take a second looking out the window to swallow down the intense shame, before his train of thought was back into motion again. What could possibly have led Peter to be so unafraid— no, that was wrong. Peter had been afraid, frightened, terrorized, but he fought his fear and fought to lay himself so very _ still _ in Tom’s vise and then dared to stay and sleep in the same private cabin, open and unarmed. Tom wracked his brain to make sense of Peter's course of actions all the way up to the present moment. 

The first thing Tom said, when he found the resolution in him to break the silence, was, “You must want something back.”

Peter gave a start, frightful, and it tugged painfully at Tom’s chest. When Peter looked to him, though, he merely looked puzzled, pale as he was. “...What are you talking about?”

“You have to want something back from me, huh? You could have turned me in; you should have.” He laughed. “Yet you went to such lengths to even shield me from the police. What do you want, Peter?”

“No. I know I ought to bring you to the authorities, but that wouldn’t do you any good. You would try to get out of it, and would only get you and someone else hurt, most probably.”

“Come on now,” Tom said hushedly with an amiable smile and he could see Peter grimace at it. “Don’t try to act so noble. I’m indebted to you now, you’ve seen to it. I’m even dependent on you now, see, my secrets are all yours and then some...”

Peter looked appalled. Hurt, even. “Tom, I don’t want anything of the likes. Please don’t suggest such things, it—”

“...I know your proclivities, and you’ve got a career, you cannot tarnish your name. You can’t have some who _ talks_. This would be just between us, I swear—”

“_Stop it_.” The words echoed back in the closed cabin. Had Peter ever raised his voice before? Tom clammed up, stunned, but relieved - good that Peter had finally admitted to his true motives, wasn’t it? Then Peter continued and his crestfallen tone shattered Tom completely. “You want me to say I didn’t do any of it for you, is that it?”

It was surprisingly easy to just nod.

“You might be right. It wasn’t for you. I _ do _ want something, and that is for you to stop lying more— No, listen, Tom. You keep your secrets. You don’t have to tell them to me, or to anyone for the matter.” Peter paused, took in a breath. “Just forget the blood on your hand. Ignore it as I had and I would too. If you kill me you’d just have to find someone else and start all over again, and when will it stop? It’s enough. Do what you have been doing: Use me. Please, Thomas. Just use me. No more lives lost, that’s all I ask of you.”

_ Thomas_. He said _ Thomas_. Peter was serious. It was Tom’s turn to feel hurt. _ Peter thinks he’s replaceable to me. _ Because of Tom's doing, too, and however would Tom be able to amend to this? It panged in his chest and ate into him, a deep, deep sting spreading like frostbite. Unlike Peter, though, he had no way to defend his lies against himself. “So all that was for the greater good?” He managed a lopsided smile, void of everything.

Peter looked deathly pale, eyes wide and gemlike, welling. And then he closed his eyes, very slowly, turning away, swallowing harsh. He was still too good-hearted, Tom knew, to say the answer to Tom’s face.

Night fell on them as they both fell into silence. Peter was either trying to sleep or trying to pretend to sleep. Valiant effort, either way, and Tom did them both a favor by looking intensely outside the window. Tom did not sleep. Past a certain moment, Peter’s breathing evened and Tom’s thoughts quieted. He was far too entangled with Peter now to try anything and get away with it. And then the idea rolled away as his stomach lurched from the mere hideousness of the act - of taking Peter’s life, of fathoming a life without Peter, of going back to the terrible, dark, lonesome basement in the depths of Tom Ripley. Maybe Peter knew this. Maybe Peter had been gambling with his life all along. He did not look like the kind of person to do such a thing, but then again, Tom could never have imagined Peter to be seeking out shady men and paying for forged passports, either.

He placed a hand on his suitcase, made to stand up. His gaze pulled back to Peter as though by force of gravitation. The light in the cabin was dim and warm on Peter’s skin. His head leaned to one side, inclined, exposing his throat where bruises were only starting to form. Tom had never seen him look so worn asleep, brows still slightly pinched as though in a fitful dream. He didn’t dare to come closer. Not because he might wake Peter, but because he was not sure if he would kiss his mouth or wring his neck.

By the time the grainy voices announced the train had come a stop at Fontainebleau, Tom was clutching his suitcase at the doors, ready to exit.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As soon as Tom thought of Peter, his heart sunk like a weighed down boat. _Like Dickie’s corpse in San Remo._ He tried to chase the image out of his head. It didn’t feel right to think of Peter one moment and Dickie, or death, the next.

Tom took his sweet time in Fontainebleau, in the picturesque town of Villeperce-sur-Seine. He had enough francs with him to stay here comfortably for at least another month, if he was careful enough with accomodation. Motels would do. He took a trip through the bookstore and got himself a phrasebook to navigate himself around, and a dictionary to keep up with the news. Despite what Peter had said, there was no telling whether he would rat Tom out. And if not him, then the good inspectors of Rome who couldn’t seem to get his hands off the Dickie case. There was little Tom could trust now, least of all himself.

He would have loved to call the week that followed ‘peaceful’, but it was anything but. Everywhere he looked, he saw Peter. Sometimes, waking up from a restless night, Tom would have to take moments to remind himself that Peter was not laying cold and lifeless in a private cabin on a French train, only found when the conductor came knocking to check their ticket. Peter was alive and giving concert for multiple nights in London, right now. Or was he? Sometimes, Tom could not tell apart what his mind had made up and what had transpired, and he would have to reassure himself that Peter’s absence would have made the headlines, had he not reached London. Sometimes these confusion fits happened in broad daylight and, sitting alone on a bench outside the station of Fontainebleau with a suitcase, his face in his hands, Tom would not realize how much he looked like a drunkard until a police officer addressed him. “I don’t speak French,” he would mutter in English, and the man in uniform would frown and veer away, unable to recognize Tom because he couldn’t have. None of them could have.

He asked himself questions, often. The _ why _ morphed into _ what _ as his tired mind drank the painful poison in Peter’s answer bit by bit. Peter thought himself responsible _ for _ Tom. How noble of Mister Smith-Kingsley to bear the burden of containing the explosive, dangerous Thomas Ripley. Tom was irate. It would have been better if Peter had given a more conceited rationale; at least, that way, Tom would have turned out to mean something more to him than a mere civic duty. He imagined Peter congratulating himself in his mind, tried to give him the most boorish, most pretentious self-praises. He failed. Peter emerged radiant from the muddy nastiness of Tom’s talented mind, the only stain ever on him being inky sauce on his lips, one that Tom had wiped off with the pad of his thumb in a moment captured in the amber of his memory so, so long ago. Peter had thought himself disposable to Tom. His eyes stung, his throat felt tight.

If he was righteous Peter’s little piece of responsibility, then he would make Peter fail. That was all. He didn’t necessarily want to do anything out of line. Peter might be coming back to look for him. If he did, it might be because he cared; or because he had finally had some sense knocked into him and decided to come back with the police. If he did not, it could only meant that he had given up. _ I can kill you _ , Tom thought angrily. _ You can’t run _ . The anger was sapped out of him soon enough. _ If he is alive, that is _ . He stared at his hands, aghast. Of course, Peter was alive, and Peter was not the one running: Tom was. And run again he would. _ I can kill him _. He suddenly felt very afraid. He didn’t want to bear witness to the debris of whatever there had been between them. Had there been anything, between them? No matter how much he talked himself into feeling pride, all he felt was miserable.

Tom had caged himself, and he’d left his key behind.

—

Villeperce-sur-Seine was so tranquil it was starting to make him antsy. Tom decided to travel, to feel a little less passive. He meandered northeast, along the Seine. He stopped here and there, in Melun and then Rouen, then mostly in small towns where people only spoke rural French and would look at him oddly anyway no matter the name on his passport. He kept close attention on the papers still, when he could. No news on Dickie Greenleaf. Nothing about Peter. The dead stayed dead, the living remained alive, and Tom Ripley was once again in purgatory.

He had only arrived at the outskirts of Le Havre, when he was greeted by the articles _ Bagages de M. Greenleaf : identifiés _ and _ Pseudonyme à Naples de Richard Greenleaf confirmé _, on page five and eight of two different newspapers he’d picked up. Both were short, and Tom could not bother to look up every word. He scoured the city for an American Express, disappointed when he found none. He did not find an English paper at any newspaper shop, either. Finally, Tom headed into a hotel, one of the fancier ones with statues on either side of the main door. There he found what he was looking for. Just as he’d expected, there was news on Dickie Greenleaf. Good news.

NOBODY NAMED ROBERT S. FANSHAW FOUND,  
DEPOSITOR OF GREENLEAF BAGGAGE

Tom devoured the article at once. _ The fingerprints on the articles in the suitcases and the saxophone are identical as the fingerprints found in Greenleaf’s abandoned apartment _ , it said. And then, _ an alternative speculation is that he exists at present under the alias Robert S. Fanshaw or another alias. In any case, it is futile to search... _ Nothing about Di Massimo. Nothing about Meredith Logue or Marjorie Sherwood or even Dickie’s rings. It meant that the fingerprints, for all they were worth, had actually guaranteed his innocence. The investigation was done, case closed, gone. Perhaps Inspector Roverini had had a deadline and Paris had been his last chance and Tom - or rather, _ Di Massimo _ \- had passed the test with flying colors while Roverini had been sent back to Rome to simmer. Tom felt lightheaded. He was not suspected at all. He was not going to go to jail, or die. He was free.

It also meant that Peter had protected him all this time.

Relief was fleeting. As soon as Tom thought of Peter, his heart sunk like a weighed down boat. _ Like Dickie’s corpse in San Remo. _ He tried to chase the image out of his head. It didn’t feel right to think of Peter one moment and Dickie, or death, the next.

Tom decided to take a calm walk in the central park of Le Havre. Even downtown, far away from the shores, the winds still tasted vaguely of seasalt. By the time the sky turned indigo, Tom had walked a dozen rounds and still could not make out anything intelligible from the noise in his mind. Perhaps he should leave the park, he thought; it had the same tranquility as Villeperce now, especially when the sun was setting and chattering voices were starting to ebb away. He turned mid-road and went back on his tracks instead of straight ahead towards the closest gate. There were a few different exits, as the park was quite large, but over there was a statue of some French mayor with a soft, subtle smile that eerily reminded him of subody and Tom did not want to pass by it. He went for the gate that he first came in through, instead.

He had not seen it when he first came in, but now, coming out, Tom saw the small metal plate propped near the metal gate and mostly dwarfed by the tree right by its side. It was supposed to look modestly commemorative, as it appeared. A single phrase was engraved on it:

SALVADOR DALI ET LUIS BUÑUEL ONT TOURNÉ DES SEGMENTS  
DU FILM _ UN CHIEN ANDALOU _ ICI

The site used to be where Salvador Dali filmed parts of _ Un chien andalou _ with Luis Buñuel, if Tom understood it correctly. Placed in the niche in the stand of the plate was a small information brochure - old and faded but not worn, as though it had been left there a long time but nobody had actually picked it up. Tom did, flipping through the pages with little heart, slightly surprised when an English translation came to view after he’d gone through the pages in French. He skimmed the biography, until he reached the _ Works _ section, _ Collaborations _ subsection. His eyes caught a name, Lorca. A certain poet. There was his full name, that Tom had never known before.

_ Frederico García Lorca._

Frederico. The ground lurched under Tom’s feet. His name. Peter’s faux passport name. _Frederico._ He said he picked it. Peter said _he_ picked the name, the first name. It could not have been coincidence. And Tom’s passport. _Robert_ _S. Hall_, S for _Salvador_. Salvador… _Salvador Dalí_. 

His world turned. Tom felt almost queasy. Here it said, Lorca and Dali had been very close. Here it said, Dali turned cold and their ardent friendship was extinguished bit by bit until all that was left was ash. Lorca coveted someone, it said. Unsure who. He was shot dead by state police. Secretive, Lorca had taken his red, tortured heart to his grave.

Here it said, the poet had never written anyone else an ode. _ Ode to Salvador Dali. _

_ A dear friend. Very dear._ Peter’s voice echoed in his head.

There had been something, Tom thought, clutching the papers to his heart as he ran. There had been something between them. Peter picked the name; Peter picked their faux passport names. Slim as it was, absurd as it was, it was a sliver of hope. Tom clung to it, readily.

—

Peter would be leaving London in a day, Tom remembered. Leave for Ireland, for a small village outside of Dublin, with Tom, had been the plan, until it fell apart. But now Tom was going to mend it. Even at the cost of having Peter call the police upon seeing him, he had to. And he didn’t have much time.

“I would like to go to London,” Tom uttered, breathless, all at once, in French. He was at the port of Le Havre, the only one but also a large one at that. The sky had gone pink. It was a little over half past seven when he’d glimpsed the clock on the way. He could only pray that there was still a boat. The lady at the ticket counter looked up, looking near half-asleep in her apathy. She heard his accent, no doubt. Tom hoped she understood.

Thankfully, she replied with a price and a number. The next ferry departed at eight - meaning, in a quarter hour. Le Havre-Portsmouth. Then a train from Portsmouth, Tom thought, hoisting his suitcase and striding briskly towards the dock. He could make it before the last concert of the week ended. 


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It played out almost the same each time: he would come in, ask for Peter, full of hope only to receive a shake of the head and a sympathetic, or irritated, or apologetic offer. The sky was darkening, and Tom was starting to truly wonder if Peter was still alive.

Any other day and perhaps Tom would have thought Portsmouth was a charming town in its own right. But right at this moment, sitting in wait for the delayed train to London, he wanted nothing more than to be out of the place. He had arrived the day prior, at midnight, had spent a night tossing over in a minimal motel room, hoping to catch the earliest train in the morning. It should have departed at six, but the time had changed to eight, and Tom had two hours to spare.

When there was little to do beside wait, Tom tended to invent. Making up stories to tell himself had always been pleasant; yet right now it was anything but. His mind was restless with disastrous scenarios, none of which even involved the police yet. If Peter wanted nothing to do with him any longer, he would have no choice but to leave. For the States, most probably; or he could make use of his last blessing and give himself a new life as Robert Hall, as it so said on his passport. Tom could do that. But he did not want to. Robert Hall was even less of a somebody than Tom Ripley. Robert Hall had nobody to love.

Finally the train came whistling into the platform. The ride took another agonizing two hours. Scenery blurred backwards, bright blue sky and shining sun on vast meadows, all looking the same like a montage played in a loop. After a while Tom got sick of it, so he pulled the curtain and, despite himself, passed out.

By the time he stumbled into Waterloo Station, it was a little past noon. The smell of hearty dishes wafted from the restaurants in view. It made Tom queasy and the cacophony of clinking silverware near drove him mad. He couldn’t even stomach a cup of coffee for his sleep-stung eyes. 

Tom bought a map and asked for the Savoy, where they were meant to stay. It was fairly easy to find, owing to its reputation no doubt, and Tom felt the same dull awareness of his almost disheveled appearance as he’d felt when he came back from San Remo after the sordid affair - aware, but too numb to feel self-conscious. He came up to the reception, put on an English accent and asked for Peter Smith-Kingsley. The receptionist asked him to wait, and went through a thick volume.

There was no Smith-Kingsley staying at the Savoy.

Tom tried again. “He’s an acquaintance. We are to meet here at thirteen. Smith-Kingsley must be here. He called me just yesterday!”

“I’m sorry, sir.” The receptionist blinked. Tom wondered if he’d raised his voice. “There is nobody called that who have checked in in the past week. We do have a few guests with the first name Peter, perhaps—”

“It’s alright. It’s alright, I might have been mistaken,” Tom said, and left.

He took to a phone booth, calling information center and writing down the name and address of half a dozen hotels near the Royal Albert Hall - where Peter would be performing with the orchestra - and another few luxurious hotels no matter the location, given that it wasn’t too far from center. It played out almost the same each time: he would come in, ask for Peter, full of hope only to receive a shake of the head and a sympathetic, or irritated, or apologetic offer.  _ No _ , he repeated each time,  _ it might have been a mistake on my part. I am sorry. _ The sky was darkening, and Tom was starting to truly wonder if Peter was still alive.

—

The concert started at 8PM and Tom could not recall having ever been so nervous. If Peter was truly as alive as he remembered he had left him, then he would be there, on stage. Tom had even looked at the newspaper: Nothing about a missing musician. Peter would be here; he had to. 

The curtains pulled apart. The conductor was not yet there, which was not unusual, but that was not the most of his concerns. Tom scanned the orchestra members: string players tuning their instruments, brass hauling their instruments onto their shoulder, a slim lady taking her seat beside the harp, and a tall figure shifting from behind the grand piano, out of concealment, pale and brilliant in the stage light.

That was Peter.

—

Tom made sure not to walk quietly. It was inky outside, and the musicians were leaving. “Peter,” Tom called. Peter might have heard him; he seemed to be slowing down. Tom tried to be loud, to announce his presence from afar. Anything but to turn up like a bad surprise. Peter turned, froze, and Tom kept walking, too afraid to stop. Then Peter said something to the woman he’d been talking to and separated from the group. 

They were alone now, almost, just out of a side wing of the building.

“Peter.” Tom dropped his suitcase to the ground and stopped, three strides away. He didn’t want to drive Peter to back away. Peter didn’t seem to have any such intention, thankfully. He looked surprised, but surprisingly calm, despite his pallor. “Thank God. I’ve been looking for you, everywhere.”

“You could have gone back to Venice,” Peter said quietly. “I would be back there.”

For once he was unreadable. Tom stared, gathering his thoughts and his courage. “I can’t, I needed to,”  _ to know that you’re alive; _ “I wanted to see you, Peter. I’m sorry. For the lies, and the threats, and for running away, when I ought to be grateful. I don’t intend to— I won’t do anything… to you. I don’t want to hurt you; I can’t.” Tom faltered. No matter how many times he said sorry, it would ring empty to his ears. Not because he was being insincere, but because words could not measure the depth of his shame. “I swear, Peter, I…”

Tom could not breathe. Peter was holding him so tight he almost lifted Tom off the ground. He was shaking, or maybe Tom was shaking, or maybe they both were. Tom clutched Peter back, hard.

—

It turned out that Peter had chosen to stay at a small boutique hotel called Alessandro, near the concert hall but away from where the other musicians were staying, and Tom did not ask him why. Peter never asked Tom why he’d come back, either. The cab ride was too short to say anything. The flight of stair between the hotel reception and their room was too full of nerves. And as soon as the door closed behind them, they stumbled into each other with little more than a word. They fell to the bed, limbs tangled. Tom breathed against Peter’s neck, delighting in the shudder. His hand slipped between dark fabric and warm skin. The room was dark; there was no need to put out the light.

His body had missed Peter so much it ached. Peter’s lips bruised his jaw and Tom shivered. Hands traced from waist to hips, skin grew dewy with sweat, lips parted in blithe notes, breaths chased down a thigh. “Don’t get up,” he said, kissed Peter on the mouth, kissed his wet cheek, kissed the pulse on his throat, kissed the soft bareness of his clavicle, kissed until Peter cupped his face and drank his voice from his lips. Peter’s fingers dug into his shoulder blades and Tom smiled. He touched and caressed, cherished and savored, gave and took; Peter arched, cried out, and he was breathlessly alive.

Their breaths calmed down in tandem. They laid chest to chest, arms round the waist, and Tom felt Peter’s smile in his hair. And then Peter spoke, uttering each word with care. “I read the news.” He paused when Tom pulled back. “The investigation is closed. No one will threaten you anymore.”

“Yes,” Tom answered hastily. “But, Meredith is...?”

“She is back in the States, isn’t she? She has better chances trying to convince Mr. Greenleaf than bothering you—”

“And Marge?”

Peter paused, and then, “Are you going to, to leave again?”

His voice was stripped of the usual sureness. He sounded fearful. Tom’s chest clenched painfully. “No, no. Peter, no.” He cupped Peter’s face with one hand, brushed a thumb over his cheekbone. “I’m not going anywhere.” Peter sighed, closed his eyes. Tom pressed his lip against dark matted lashes, and Peter smiled so he took the chance to say, “Why did you do all that… for me?”

“Because— you know why.” Peter stroked his hair. 

Tom cover Peter’s hand with his own, laced their fingers together. “I don’t. Tell me.” Peter didn’t avert his eyes, but Tom sensed hesitation. “Please,” he added. “Is it because I’m dangerous?”

“God, Tom, no!” Peter protested at once. Tom leaned forward to kiss the corner of his mouth. Peter relaxed, and Tom whispered, “I only want to know if I’m forcing you into anything.”

“You old fool.” Peter leaned their foreheads together. “It’s because I trust you, Thomas.”

—

Dawn filtered into the room. Tom awoke. He cradled Peter a little closer to his chest, and closed his eyes again. There were plenty of trains to Dublin. They could always catch a later one.

_End_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _But above all I sing a shared thought_  
_that joins us in the dark and the golden hours._  
_It is not Art, this light that blinds our eyes._  
_Rather it is love, friendship, the clashing of swords._
> 
> — Frederico Garcia Lorca, excerpt from _Ode to Salvador Dali_.
> 
> —
> 
> Thank you for reading! :) Let me know what you think.


End file.
